A Line, a Scar, a Stage is a research-based installation that investigates the inherent contradictions of the Saudi-Iraq border, a product of 20th-century nation-state formation. The work employs manipulated archival print, speculative moving images, and re-enacted figurine scenes—drawing from exchanges between officials and civilians—to offer a non-linear history of how this border and its adjacent neutral zone have been conceived, traversed, and described since the early 1900s to today. By reinterpreting historical documentation from the region, the installation reveals how the politicization of space, through the national and border apparatus, has conditioned the relationship of these neighborly regions as unstable and precarious.

While the border evokes rigidity and sense of control, for the artist, the topography of the border region signifies seasonal rhythms and long-standing practices of movement. Rather than portraying a disconnected or vulnerable geography, the installation suggests environmental collectivity and stewardship, as opposed to political separation.

Through a blend of hand-made and readymade toys, chemically altered images, abstracted geographic lines, and shredded archival prints that take on the texture of the terrain, the piece acts as a cosplay of a “kinked” geography to expand on the term kink, which is used to describe the spatial features of the Iraq-Saudi Arabia border in official records.