Consensual Inequality is the phrase I made up to describe the agreement between the immigrant and the state. This work continues what has been questioned in the ‘Young Titans (2017)’, in reaction to the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s open letter in 2017 to the public. In the letter, Rutte urged immigrants to either adapt to the value of the country (act normal) or leave. When this happened, I was preparing for the application documents for longer stay in the country, which required me to prove how good or successful I am as an artist. Inspired by this experience, I cut the letters WELKOM (welcome) from a IKEA doormat, rearranged them as the word NORMAAL (normal) in the same piece of fabric, and placed few envelopes of the tax office as the bottom layer, which can only be noticed by viewers when they get close enough to the floor.

For Art Rotterdam 2018, I placed the transformed doormat alongside its IKEA original at the entry of the gallery booth for visitors to step over, and for them to contemplate the interplay between the two textual messages.