Osman Yousefzada — More Immigrants Please

Osman Yousefzada’s work moves like it’s alive, everything woven together with migration, memory, and identity. He grew up navigating multiple cultures, and that shows in the materials he chooses: fabrics, patterns, threads that carry both personal and political histories. I love how he transforms the domestic, the everyday, into something public and charged. 

One artwork that really strikes me is “More Immigrants Please”. It holds so much power in its simplicity. It’s a billboard installation, bold and confrontational in public spaces. It was made at a time when anti-immigration rhetoric was at a high point. Headlines, protests, and political speeches constantly weaponizing fear. Now, even years later, the conversation has not shifted. There’s still the same tension: who is allowed in, who gets seen, whose story is heard.

He uses the visual language of barricade tape, typically associated with restriction and exclusion, and reappropriates it alongside an eastern-style welcoming rug, flipping the narrative of the piece. The letters are oversized and vibrant but the materiality is tactile, almost soft in contrast to the political message. It’s part banner, part sculpture, part protest. The work isn’t complete without the viewer navigating it. Moving through the installation, your body responds to the barriers and invitations, to the patterns and colors, almost performing the negotiation of migration itself.  It’s confrontational and poetic at once. Loud yet tender.