Ricardo Fonseca, Alien Card, 2012, Digital illustration printed on adhesive vinyl, mounted on Sintra board, mirror, and wood; 24" x 36," (Collection of the Artist).

 

​Ricardo Fonseca’s Alien Card is an artistic-exploration that treads between the serious subject of becoming a permanent resident alien, with all the implications that one has to go through to acquire permanent resident status in the United States, and the notion of an instantaneous “Green Card-on-demand” art installation. Fonseca’s interactive installation provides the opportunity for anyone looking to acquire a Resident Alien Card (or “Green Card”), with the prospect of instant gratification — by simply using their smart phone and/or having a friend or a passerby snap your portrait on Fonseca’s Alien Card art piece. Through the experience of Alien Card, Fonseca gives his viewers a straightforward, visual means to reach the American dream to become a legal, permanent resident of the U.S. — the last step before being a candidate for Naturalization (or U.S. citizenship). Of course, the real process is much more painful, time consuming, and costly than Fonseca’s ruse-esque simulation of the often arduous steps of becoming a Permanent Resident Alien in the U.S. Disconnected from planetary human feeling, the term “alien” marginalizes the very action of merging “into” or assimilating “onto” a new society.  Humans are not extraterrestrial as is implicated by the word “alien.”  Indeed, there is a bias, a stereotype, which is emphasized by the entire process as being unnatural, cold, costly, and full of obstacles that do not facilitate the transition to “legal” permanent residency. Commercialism, a large part of Americanism, is also pushed forward in Alien Card, as Fonseca implies within the commercialization of attaining Green Cards — a metaphor of the consumption in a Capitalistic society, such as that of the United States. In this commercial aspect, the work is Neo-Pop in temperament.

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