2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(2) threatened and oppressed as an artist and member of the Harijan (‘untouchable’) community that paints Hindu deities collaborating with western superheroes. His work was not accepted for exhibition in Kathmandu. When he had the opportunity to present his work on statelessness, he found his experience was quite similar to stateless people. He said, ‘I found myself as unseen and untouchable in my society and my situation is quite similar to the stateless person, who exist in reality, yet they are invisible’. 97 I was impressed by how he had translated his personal experience to conceptualise the situation of stateless people. I asked him ‘why, then, do you intend to represent your artwork in a conference on statelessness? Your artwork derived primarily from your own experience, what do these artworks and experiments have to do with statelessness?’ He replied, My experience taught me that the ultimate vulnerabilities come from nonrecognition. When people are overlooked and ignored on the basis of religion, caste, class, gender, ethnicity and nationality nothing could be worse. Statelessness is the same situation of non-recognition, it is the ultimate non-recognition. People or groups just do not belong anywhere, thus they become unseen, they become untouchable, and they become ghosts. But they are human, they have hope and need hope. 98 I could not have agreed more. On 26 June 2019, the first day of the conference, Creative Court and Empathy and Risk scheduled Manish’s live performance during lunchtime. Manish sat on a chair in front of a table wearing a huge bowl (made of steel) on his face. He was moving his head very slowly, his hands were also moving around the table very slowly like he was searching for something. I saw almost everyone was looking at him. One of the participants brought food for him and placed the food in front of him. The participant also sat in front of him, he asked Manish, ‘what do you need? I brought you food, you can eat’. But Manish remained silent and kept moving his hands around the table. The person looked disconcerted and said, ‘I am not sure what you want’. 99 The second person came and sat in front of him. She was talking to him, at one moment she touched the moving hands of Manish and I saw his hands firmly take the participant’s (Figure 4). I was standing close to them. She then declared enthusiastically, ‘I get it, we need to give them a hand, so that they do not feel abandoned’. 100 Later, I also did the same, and he repeated his act as earlier; as soon as my hand reached his, he held firmly. I felt that the goal of these live performances was to create empathy for stateless persons, who you do not see, cannot talk to, but need assistance regardless — they need humanity to step up for their cause. They are searching for hope, even though the system makes it quite impossible for them. Later I asked him, why did you hold hands and do nothing else? He replied, ‘holding hands symbolises that they are searching for hope and ways to end their stateless situation, maybe those hands were providing some hope’. 101 97 98 99 Informal conversation with Manish Harijan, artist (Mizuran Rahman, 22 June 2019) ibid. Reaction of an anonymous participant (Mizanur Rahman, World Conference on Statelessness and Inclusion, 26 June 2019) 100 Reaction of an anonymous participant (Mizanur Rahman, World Conference on Statelessness and Inclusion, 26 June 2019) 101 Informal conversation with Manish Harijan, artist (Mizanur Rahman, 26 June 2019) 292