The Immigrant Artist Biennial reveals title and artist list
The third edition of TIAB is titled Identity Card. The biennial unfolds as a series of screenings, performances and panels throughout October-November 2026.
Notices
New York, July 2026 — The Immigrant Artist Biennial announces the title and thematic of it’s third edition: Identity Card. Unfolding as a series of 7+ screenings, performances, panels, workshops, and a potluck taking place throughout October and November 2026, the Iana Safina Co-Curator Sanna Almajedi, Lesley Bodzy Co-Curator Sofia Thiệu D’Amico, Bailey Coleman Co-Curator Eva Mayhabal Davis, and co-curator Anna Khimasia frame individual but interconnected programs as a temporary space of rupture and fugitivity. 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.
“The Immigrant Artist Biennial was founded to create a space where immigrant artists can be seen, heard, and celebrated. As an immigrant, I know that belonging is something we build together. With Identity Card, we continue that mission by convening artists, audiences, and communities in conversation, affirming that immigrant voices are an essential part of the cultural fabric of our past, present, and future.” - Founding Artistic Director, Katya Grokhovsky
“I am extremely excited that our incredibly talented curators have shaped a powerful new space across multiple nodes in the city to explore migration, technology, and human rights with their event-based format. In a city like New York, which is saturated with great exhibitions, it is exhilarating to be inviting audiences to gather around a series of time-based media presentations, conversations, and parties. Right now, New Yorkers crave community.” - Director, Anna Mikaela Ekstrand
Artists, activists, and organizers will 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 PDF catalog, designed by Alice Herbert and featuring newly commissioned essays and republished texts, will accompany Identity Card to further envision resistance to indexing as a means of asserting individual and collective insurgence against dehumanizing global forces.
“Write down!
I am an Arab
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged
My roots
Were entrenched before the birth of time
And before the opening of the eras
Before the pines, and the olive trees
And before the grass grew.”
"Identity Card” by Mahmoud Darwish
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
Bahar Behbahani
Rawya El Chab
Stephanie Comilang
Ivana Dama
Rachelle Dang
Tasha Douge
Bel Falleiros
Maya Jeffereis
Andrew Yong Hoon Lee
Pearlynn Lii
Sujin Lim
Simon Liu
mandla
LuLu Meng
National Coalition Against Censorship
Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi
Lita Vinueza
Anh Vo
Layqa Nuna Yawar
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
James Hoff
Artist and Member, Primary Information
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
and the curators of TIAB 2026: Identity Card.
Venues
BRIC
Brooklyn Art Haus
Essex Street Market
Residency Unlimited
Nguyen Wahed
Shiva Gallery at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Partners
Accent Sisters (Publisher)
ArteEast
Asia Art Archive in America
Cultbytes
IMPULSE
Kinoki
Matka
Rethink Food
The Here and There Collective
UBS Wealth Management
Designers
Alice Herbert (Catalog)
Anders Newman (Visual Identity)
Creative Video Producer
Shuran He
VISIT US
The full program for The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2026: Identity Card will be released in September 2026 on our website. 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 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. theimmigrantartistbiennial.com / @theimmigrantartistbiennial
PRESS INQUIRIES
Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, info@cultbytes.com. All presskits.
SUPPORT
To support the 2026 biennial, please consider donating through PayPal or NYFA. Follow @theimmigrantartistbiennial and review past editions at theimmigrantartistbiennial.com.
IMAGES
Ivana Dama. Echoes of Urgencies. Photographed by Oresti Tsonopoulos. Courtesy of the artist and The Immigrant Artist Biennial. Maya Jefferies. Land of Eternal Summer. Photographed by Martin Parsekian. Courtesy of the artist and The Immigrant Artist Biennial.