2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(2) In this article, I examine one such art-based approach employed by United Kingdom-based organisation Empathy and Risk, 8 and its Netherlands-based partner organisation, Creative Court, 9 where I worked as an intern for six months. This article is primarily based on my observations and analyses of the artworks exhibited and performed by those two organisations at the World Conference on Statelessness and Inclusion organised by the Institute of Statelessness and Inclusion (‘ISI’) that ran from 26–28 June 2019 in The Hague. 10 I argue that the art-based approaches discussed in this paper intend to problematise discourses surrounding statelessness that are mostly limited to the legal and political fields. These artistic approaches try to break through this prevalence of legal rhetoric and metaphor. Through various artworks, they intend to humanise statelessness by bringing forward the agency, experiences, feelings, perceptions and hopes of stateless persons. In essence, an artistic approach aims to create empathy for the stateless. This paper demonstrates how art can ‘humanise’ the issue of statelessness through the generation of empathy for stateless persons that results from addressing their vulnerability, recognising their agency and engaging in their hopes. Artworks can successfully frame and represent statelessness in a different way, but often do not challenge dominant discourses or seek to change them. As will be discussed, I consider this inaction to be a major drawback of artistic approaches. METHODOLOGY This article addresses four questions. First, how have academics in legal, political and human rights fields framed and represented statelessness? Second, how does the art-based approach employed by Empathy and Risk and Creative Court frame and represent statelessness through various artworks? Third, how does an artbased approach produce a novel or different discourse on statelessness than that of law-based discourse? And finally, what are the drawbacks of such an approach? I adopted an ethnographical approach described by David Mosse to answer these questions, understand the ideas and practices of the aforementioned organisations and engage in their art projects and events on statelessness. 11 In doing so, I positioned myself as an embedded researcher to explore the material and discursive practices of Empathy and Risk and Creative Court in everyday settings. Mosse stated that this type of insight do[es] not arise from conventional anthropological research projects, but are the result of reflection on the experience of living and working as part of the interconnected expert world of international development. 12 He categorises this type of research as ‘insider ethnography’ or ‘autoethnography’ — a form of research that values the reflexive capabilities of an observant participant as much as participant observers. 13 His objective is to move from 8 9 10 11 12 13 See Empathy and Risk (Web Page) <http://www.empathyandrisk.com/>. See Creative Court (Web Page) <https://www.creativecourt.org/>. For details, see ‘World Conference on Statelessness’, Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (Web Page, 2019) <https://www.institutesi.org/raising-awareness/world-conference-onstatelessness>. David Mosse (ed), Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development (Berghan 2011). ibid vii. ibid. 274