The Weight of Silence
Language plays a central role in the critique of colonial power structures. Bureaucratic language—especially within immigration systems—often acts as a means of exclusion, reducing lived experience to data.
"The Weight of Silence" is closely based on the transcript of an official interview conducted with me by Dutch immigration authorities in late 2017. I have analyzed 34 pages of interview transcripts documenting my experience as an immigrant seeking asylum in the Netherlands. As part of this process, the Dutch authorities can determine whether I am granted asylum, allowed to remain in the country – or forced to return to my home country, regardless of the risks to my safety.
This performative situation is an internal dialogue that aims to convey the emotional toll these painful procedures impose on immigrants. The resulting text is filled with blank spaces by omitting answers and selectively editing questions. The absence of dialogue echoes the emptiness of the bureaucratic system—a performance in which immigrants must "play hard" to prove their truth. In contrast, the truth of power is already predetermined.
The movement in the rope dart dialogue raises questions of temporal endurance, question repetition, and psychological effects. Historically, the rope dart was used as a military weapon in China between 680 and 918 AD and is now practiced as a martial art. In "The Weight of Silence," the body and rope dart recontextualize resistance and resilience.
Note: If you would like to be involve in performance please wear a white shirt.
Credits
Concept and performance: Malina Suliman
Music: Jacop Klang
Light Support: Olle Axén
Supervision: Darko Dragičević
Production: Karin Hauptmann
Image: Darko Dragičević
Creation Support: Stockholm University of the Arts
Biography
Born in Afghanistan, Malina Suliman has lived in exile for over a decade. She received her MA from the Dutch Art Institute in 2015. In 2017, she was awarded the Artist Protection Fund, which enabled a scholarship at the Van Abbe Museum. In 2024, she joined a Residency at JVE in Maastricht.
Her artistic practice explores urban space as a place of mobility, displacement, and diasporic flows - of people, knowledge, and cultural artifacts. Acknowledging these movements and tensions, her work questions the constructed nature of culture and offers a critical lens on multicultural contexts. By juxtaposing the exiles' collective and fragmented identities, she opens up a space for dialogue that connects experiences across borders and languages.
Working through conceptual, performative, and research processes, her practice functions as a tool for social and political critique. It deals with mechanisms of exclusion and inequality, examining the hierarchies of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and citizenship that shape everyday life. Essentially, her work raises pressing questions about belonging, survival, and origins - while imagining possibilities for joint action and the future of collaboration.
