Show Me Your Papers

by Maria Eduarda Lima-Roope

Maria Eduarda Lima-Roope (b. 1999, Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian mixed media artist based in California whose practice explores identity, culture, and the layered meaning behind materials and forms. In her own words: "I hope to start a conversation in someone's mind, built upon conversations I have had with myself." Her series IDs: Immigration and the Self is a first-person account of navigating the American legal immigration system, doing things the right way, and discovering many reasons why someone might not. Working with newspapers, official documents, and the physical materials of bureaucracy, the series holds two questions in tension: what does this system say about a person, and who is that person once the system is done with them? Show Me Your Papers brings those questions into sharp relief. ICE coverage sourced from newspapers, her own green card denial documents reframed almost like a cage, and at the center, two origami birds folded from marriage certificates. The paper that traps and the paper that binds. The birds suggest freedom and partnership, but they are held inside the very system that defines their limits. The title means what it always means at a border: prove yourself. But the papers are all present, denials, acceptance, a real marriage, a country that calls immigrants criminals. The demand turns back on the institution: here are my papers. Now show me yours.