Third edition: Identity Card

The Immigrant Artist Biennial's third edition: Identity Card unfolds in New York City as a series of seven screenings, performances, panels, workshops and a potluck from October 8 to November 11, 2026. Co-curators Sanna Almajedi, the Iana Safina Co-curator, Sofia Thiệu D’Amico, the Lesley Bodzy Co-curator, Eva Mayhabal Davis, the Bailey Coleman Co-curator, and Anna Khimasia, the Cynthia Wu Co-curator, frame individual but interconnected programs as a temporary space of rupture and fugitivity.

See the program and book your tickets. 

In a moment marked by artistic suppression and a global rise of fascism, the biennial concept evokes the “identity card” as issued to fix us within regimes of nationality, immigration status, occupation, criminalization and class—simultaneously enabling and restricting mobility, determining who may pass, who is detained and who remains unrecognized. Inspired by Mahmoud Darwish’s poem, “Identity Card,” the 2026 biennial invokes states of being neither here nor there; with or without a land, home, citizenship, roots or community.

Artists, activists, and organizers explore collective memory, institutional censorship, embodied forms of knowledge, territorial sovereignty and mutual aid—conditions continually denied by occupying authorities as the capacity for mobility—whether physical, cultural or conceptual—remains unevenly distributed and violently policed. A complimentary PDF catalog, edited by TIAB's director Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, and an Education Kit (that can be taught remotely) accompany Identity Card to further envision resistance to indexing as a means of asserting individual and collective insurgence against dehumanizing global forces.

Artists
Bahar Behbahani, Rawya El Chab, Ivana Dama, Rachelle Dang, Tasha Douge, Bel Falleiros, Maya Jeffereis, Andrew Yong Hoon Lee, Pearlyn Lii, Sujin Lim, Simon Liu, mandla, LuLu Meng, National Coalition Against Censorship, Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi, Lita Vinueza, Anh Vo, Layqa Nuna Yawar

Events
The Immortals: Three stories. One unfinished history
October 8, 7–8:30pm, performance and artist talk co-presented by ArteEast
Brooklyn Art Haus

Opening celebration x El Salón: October 10, 5–8pm, presentation, roundtable, and potluck
Nguyen Wahed

Pinch of Us: October 22, 7–9pm, dumpling-making workshop
Essex Kitchen

Anh Vo—Phoenix Forever: October 30, 6–7pm, guerrilla performance
West Side Highway

Plant Ecologies and Migration: November 5, 6–8pm, panel discussion with artists’ slides
Residency Unlimited

Memories of Disruption: November 7, 6–8pm, performance and new media
BRIC

What We Carry: November 11, 6–8pm, screening and performance
Shiva Gallery, John Jay College

Catalog Contributors
Judith Butler
Distinguished Professor, UC, Berkeley and the Hannah Arendt Chair, European Graduate School

Natalie Diaz
Pulitzer Prize Winner and Associate Professor, ASU

Rebecca Ruth Gould
Distinguished Professor, Comparative Poetics & Global Politics, SOAS London

Elizabeth Larison and Minji Lee
Director and Associate, Arts and Culture Advocacy, National Coalition Against Censorship

Summer Kim Lee
Assistant Professor of English, UCLA

Sarah Rifky
Independent Curator

Ivana Dama
Artist

and, the curators.

Partners
Accent Sisters (Publisher)
ArteEast
Artists Alliance Inc
Asia Art Archive in America
Cultbytes
IMPULSE
Kinoki
Matka
Rethink Food
The Amplification Project
The Here and There Collective

Designers
Alice Herbert (Catalog)
Anders Newman (Visual Identity)

Creative Video Producer
Shuran He

Visit
Program is live. Everyone is welcome.

About The Immigrant Artist Biennial
The Immigrant Artist Biennial is a nomadic platform that presents the work of immigrant artists across diverse formats, including exhibitions, public programs, and publishing. It engages broad national and international audiences while maintaining a strong presence in New York. Through its multi-venue and interdisciplinary approach, the biennial creates space for dialogue, visibility, and exchange, amplifying immigrant voices and fostering connections between artists, institutions, and the public. Founded in 2019 by director Katya Grokhovsky, TIAB has showed more than 175 artists including Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Blanka Amezkua, Felipe Baeza, Marcelo Brodsky, Esperanza Cortés, Linnéa Gad, Maria Kulikovska, Raul de Lara, Jiaoyang Li and Jinjin Xu, Anina Major, Ana Mendieta, Coralina Rodriguez Meyer, Anna Ting Möller, Yali Romagoza/Cuquita the Cuban Doll, Nida Sinnokrot, and Tariku Shiferaw.

Press Inquiries
info@cultbytes.com. All presskits. 

Support
To support the 2026 biennial, please donate. 

TIAB 2026: IDENTITY CARD 
Program / Catalog / Education Kit / Newsletter