European states have categorized the bureaucracies for crossing their borders. Anyone who avoids or transgresses those controls is subject to an irregular legal condition. During the last decades, each EU state has enforced its own immigration laws to regulate and control the movements of immigrants who enter their territory. If a person enters irregularly into Spanish territory, and he or she has not reached the age of majority (according to a sworn declaration and medical controls), the custody and control of the immigrant remains in the hands of the state. Such custody and control are exerted through a dedicated Center, an internment building that houses immigrants in the same condition. Once the immigrant is legally declared an adult, he or she must wait one to three years to normalize his or her legal status in the country.


Dialect begins within a group of young immigrants who have recently crossed the strait (the maritime border between Morocco and Spain) avoiding border controls. In Seville, they settled while their legal situation is solved or diluted.

The work is divided in two parts; The first, it is a photographic series of the daily life and the expectations of this group in Seville. The photographs explore different experiences, where the body enters into dialogue with memories and the time spent on the waiting period in Spain.  
The second part, titled Recital, is a video recording, where an action is performed: to read the first four pages of the Spanish immigration law, the document that regulates and controls their migration status.
Dialect covers three years of state violence for nine young Moroccan migrants exiled in Kafka-esque limbo in Seville, southern Spain. When underage migrants enter the country illegally and cannot be verified as adults, their custody remains in the hands of the state – subjecting them to a lengthy process of up to three years to gain legal status.
In this state of suspension and liminality, Beltrán engages with the body as a metaphor: using a carefully articulated language between photography, performance and collaboration, the weight of dead time is registered upon the shoulders of these young men, entering into dialogue with their memories, journeys, and the humiliating mundanity of waiting and migration. Alongside video works and choreographed dance, Dialect breaks new documentary ground to shine a critical light on practices of bureaucratic oppression.

Winner of the 2023 FOAM Paul Huf Award