Cana Bilir-Meier builds on a 1970 competition in West Germany that sought an alternative to the term “Gastarbeiter” (“guest worker”). In Munich, a choir made up predominantly of former labor migrants of Turkish descent draws inspiration from the more than 30,000 submissions and develops its own musical interpretation. Together with the choir, the artist explores an approach to linguistic labels that is both encouraging and deconstructive—a reappropriation of words that at times appear overtly racist, often hurtful or derogatory, yet also absurd or emptied of meaning.
