A table set for six people and decorated festively with bouquets and candles. In a moment—so we suspect—the members of the family and perhaps also guests will gather to dine together. It is an upscale ambience for a well-to-do circle. Dinner parties are closed gatherings reserved for those for whom a place has been set, those who have a place. It is a table prepared in the manner familiar in Western and Westernized countries. Upon closer inspection, we see that something has been embroidered into the napkins and fired into the porcelain. It is not decoration, nor is it a monogram: It is a line of text in Dari, a language spoken in Afghanistan. Translated, it states: “You need no language to wash dishes.” This subversive intervention causes a crack to form in the cultivated world of the dinner party, and the reality concealed behind it bursts in. 
As is typical for my work process, a concrete event forms its background. During a flight to Kabul, I unintentionally overheard two men having a conversation in Dari. They were both Afghans and both had fled the country, but while the status of the refugee who had gone to Germany had been recognized, the status of the one who went to Sweden had been rejected after two years. When the man sitting next to him asked how he had been able to get by for so long in Sweden without any language skills, he answered with the sentence now inscribed on the dishes and tea towels.