This week, WHITE BOX’s gallery space has become a creative asylum where 10 successful applicants (from Mexico, Ukraine, Japan, Nigeria, etc) are spending five nights and days under a state of detention, working and developing an artistic project until April 29, 2006.

Projects must actively challenge a regime of exclusion in New York by including otherwise excluded individuals from cultural and socioeconomic systems or physical structures in the city.

In exchange, AsylumNYC provides a free lawyer to try to obtain an O-1 “Special Talent Artist Visa.” If successful, the artist will be awarded the opportunity to stay in the U.S. for up to three years.

The artists arrived at the gallery with sleeping bags, clothing and passports but without any material as one of the requirements of the project is to create an art piece from nothing.

“In the gallery they gave us a pen, a notebook, a pillow and meals. The rules say that we can make either an object or a performance, but the final work will depend on the interaction with the public,” explains Venzuelian artist Valeria Cordero. Other rules of the “residence” include: never going out of the gallery and speaking only in english.

The idea of Wooloo Productions, a collective of activists who organised the competition, is to let the artists experience the same conditions and restrictions suffered by those who arrive in the country, looking for an asylum or a working visa.

On April 28 the most original project will be selected and its author will meet Daniel Aharoni, a lawyer specialized in immigration issues. The exhibition of the winning project will open on April 29 at the WHITE BOX’s gallery.

Via El Mundo.