lately i’ve been thinking a lot about how an immigrant’s measure of worth is often reduced to what exists on paper.
student visas. post-study visas. a failed attempt at a global talent visa. asylum claim to now refugee status.
for years my life felt suspended between documents, constantly being processed, assessed and translated into proof. every form asking what value i could bring, what contribution i could make, whether my existence could be justified.
it felt strange; almost unreal, to exist for the first time without the constant fear of being hunted down by paper.
i think that feeling is what i’ve been trying to return to through the work lately. looking through old passports, family photographs, asylum paperwork and expired visas, trying to understand how a life begins to shift once it’s repeatedly filtered through systems designed to categorise it.
through image transfers and reconstruction, i’ve been distorting and layering these materials until they start becoming something else entirely. less document, more residue. less evidence, more memory. i’ve become interested in what happens when these records stop behaving the way they were intended to, and begin resisting the versions of identity once imposed onto them.
@deepstatepress
an evolving archive and publishing press centring radical queer Muslim and diasporic voices across Asian, African & SWANA contexts.
coming summer 2026.
“I think I can coexist,” Hamza (@madebyhamza ) says, “these two versions of me.” He’s sitting by the window of his flat in Leeds, morning sun falling across his shoulder. Around his neck, there’s a small gold pendant necklace, ricocheting the light.
Like many other people whose lives have been bulldozed by any number of things from natural disasters to miscarriages, divorces, deaths, there will always be a before and an after. For Hamza, the bulldozer came in the shape of a red stamp on his documents: banned for 5 years from his home country in the Middle East. Today, there’s the one it happened to, and the one who survived it.
His newest monograph, “We Fear No God, But Ourselves, breaks it all down”. Through poetry, photography, film scripts, and diary entries, Hamza explores the aftermath of being outed as a queer Muslim man. The collection documents what it means to lose your country and, in doing so, to confront your own doubleness.
“Ban,” he says carefully, “is what the authorities write on paper. When you say ban, people are like, ‘what did you do?’ And it’s like, ‘I didn’t do anything.’”
Read the full interview at the link in bio.
Written by @lexicovalsen
Edited by @jude_j0nes2002
