2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 1(2) CONCLUSION Stateless art interlocutors are reclaiming the discourse on statelessness through their creative productions. By reshaping and contesting statelessness to elicit an empathetic connection, they effectively reshuffle the European, and potentially global, system of knowledge on statelessness. First by rejecting the term and redefining it in terms of an ontologically real or delocalised ‘home’, then by shedding light on the universality of experience that exposes that membership must not be based on nation-state boundaries. Finally, stateless art interlocutors reflect on the colonial legacies of their plights, shedding light on historical connections and breaking colonial stereotypes that define stateless peoples as victims worthy of European rescue. This dissents from the discourse of statelessness as a ‘curse’ to be eradicated. Whilst still acknowledging statelessness as a source of torment and pain due to the context of becoming stateless being one of exile and conflict, and the anguish potentially contingent in a lack of a national identity, it does so in a dignified, empowering manner allowing affected populations a voice and agency. This is a perspective that must be taken into account in policy-circles. Through the arts, policy-makers can not only listen to the lived experience of affected populations, but be immersed in their experiential world. Moreover, others can become involved to help bring attention to statelessness in the arts: follow your local galleries, and urge them to support artists working on statelessness, and to include these voices in their collections. The radical empathy fostered in these artworks makes statelessness harder and harder to discard — leaving an indelible mark in our minds. Swaitat’s initial lesson rings truer than ever; he disappeared but he did not die – we must not let his story and that of other stateless art interlocutors slip through the cracks. In 2018 the Statelessness & Citizenship Review had an open call for artworks responding to the Review’s focus on advancing understandings of statelessness and citizenship phenomena and challenges. 35 The winning artwork Critical Mass by Wasim zaid Habashneh beautifully ties together many of the themes and styles adopted by the stateless art interlocutors I worked with, of home, global community, unity in difference and the universality of experience. The piece, created using a traditional Jordanian sand art in discarded fluorescent tubes with pixelated patterns, incorporates Habashneh’s architectural background in its composition moulded with larger concepts of home, belonging and identity. Critical Mass means the sufficient number to achieve a result — here Habashneh uses this as the title to prompt the question: what makes civil society? Critical Mass seems to resemble the shape of a world map, with the moving tubes structured with different slithers of colour. This alludes to a global community, whilst also delineating difference in the different colours. This also underlines how stateless people and non-citizens are equally as deserving of belonging in a global community, but should not have to erase their identity to become a part of it. Moreover, the motion of the tubes importantly signifies how societies are not static but are in fact always changing. In fact, what statelessness is and how it configures in societies will always be changing, much like shown by the fluid component of sand. Habashneh opens up our understanding of identity and belonging as territorially marked and fixed, but as always changing and able to incorporate 35 The artwork can now be found on the Statelessness & Citizenship Review’s website. See Statelessness & Citizenship Review (Web Page, 2018) <https://statelessnessandcitizenshipreview.com/index.php/journal>. 328