The US Constitution makes provisions for processes of citizenship. But between the text and experience, what is lost, overlooked, or erased? Tannaz Farsi’s screen prints The Measure I and II (all works 2020) each feature a wall of stacked words, a lexicon conjuring the experience of “measuring up” to exclusionary migration policies. Marginalia in light gray shift the semantics of bold black letters, giving viewers pause. Among these and other references to language in A More Perfect Union, Farsi’s exhibition at HOLDING Contemporary, “we the people” is conspicuously absent. Instead of coldly asserting static facts or figures, Farsi’s textual and material poetics across the gallery negotiate nativist scripts by exposing their incongruities and discontinuities, rescuing the critical will of the people from oblivion.

Tannaz Farsi, The Measure I and II, 2020. Screen print and graphite on paper, 41 ½ x 27 ½ in. framed. Courtesy of HOLDING Contemporary. Photo: Mario Gallucci. — Tannaz Farsi, *The Measure I* and II, 2020. Screen print and graphite on paper, 41 ½ x 27 ½ in. framed. Courtesy of HOLDING Contemporary. Photo: Mario Gallucci.