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7th Solicitor

Performance documented by Julia Bauer

2024 · 22 min · Live Performance

7th Solicitor unfolds through seven phone calls, drawing on my encounters with the UK Home Office’s hostile immigration system. A life must be spoken into terms the system recognises. What can be said, and what must remain unsaid, carries consequences beyond the call.

The work approaches waiting as a condition of exile: time passes, but the future remains conditional. Bureaucracy enters the intimate space of the voice, shaping how a person narrates their past in order to be permitted a future.

For years, concerns for my safety required me to conceal my queerness and limit my artistic expression. In 7th Solicitor, the act of speaking carries this history of self-censorship. The performance gives form to what I had withheld, and to the effort of making myself heard.

Buzzcut Emerging Artist Award recipient 2022, supported by BUZZCUT, Take Me Somewhere & CCA.
Creative Scotland through the open fund.

Performers: HUSS, Caitlin Muir
Set Design: HUSS, Annie Graham
Sound: KAVARI
Styling: Oona Knox

Performances:

2024
Counterpoints x Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival
Glasgow, Scotland

2023
BUZZCUT Festival, CCA
Glasgow, Scotland

“The first solicitor hangs up in your face.

You’re told to still be hopeful.

The second solicitor interrogates you.

Mohammed Hussein Al-Chokhdar

The third solicitor denies you of your hope.

System failure.

The fourth solicitor does not view your struggles in urgency.

Come back in a month.

A day is all you have.

The fifth wants you out of his country.

Will you ever belong?

The sixth one has a fee you can never aﬀord.

Your existence is outwith your means.

The seventh solicitor entices you with opportunities that do not exist,

Smoke, Mirrors and Scammers.

Privileged men in positions of illegitimate power,

deny you of your humanity,

they do not care that you are gasping for air.

Hope is not for the faint of heart.”

Huss Al-Chokhdar

Selected Works:

The Ship That Left Without Us (2026)

Until We Return (2025)

7th Solicitor (2023)

I’ve Stopped Understanding Myself (2021)

And The Flowers Have Time For Me (2020)

Meet Now (2019)

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