Article 15
Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Tal Fitzpatrick
About my work
Having no nationality is one of the most vulnerable positions a person can be in. Stateless people often have difficulty accessing basic rights: to go to school, see a doctor, get a job, open a bank account, buy a house or even get married.
I am fortunate to be a dual citizen, however in my birth country, Israel, and in the country where I live, Australia, human rights violations are perpetrated against stateless people. The contestation of Palestine’s status as an independent state and Israel’s control of Palestinian borders negatively impact the lives of Palestinians and their right to freedom of movement. In Australia, people seeking asylum who, because they are stateless, lack travel documentation, are held indefinitely in offshore detention in conditions the United Nations describes as ‘inhuman.’
We can make a difference by donating to charities that support asylum seekers, and by pressuring politicians to create humane policies, end conflict, and address climate change—predicted to cause mass displacement.
- Tal Fitzpatrick
About me
Tal Fitzpatrick is an artist, researcher, activist and community development worker based in Melbourne, Australia. She is an exhibiting artist and a published academic with extensive experience working in the non-profit sector as a community development worker, and an adult educator in community disaster resilience-building.
Born in Israel in 1988, Tal moved to the Gold Coast, Australia, with her family in 1996 where she went on to graduate from Griffith University in 2010 with a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours majoring in contemporary arts and studies in arts and creative industries. Following her Honours, Tal worked in the non-profit sector as a community development worker for four years before going back to complete a PhD on ‘Craftivism as a Mode of DIY Citizenship’ with the Centre for Cultural Partnership at the Victorian College of Arts in Melbourne.
Tal creates artwork using the techniques of appliqué quilting, drawing and painting to create large-scale, figurative, textile wall-hangings. Driven by the power of craft to solicit the sharing of stories, her socially engaged work looks to drive social change by engaging diverse groups of people in complex conversations.
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