My creative research Views from Ex-Patria concerns global trends of migration and border politics of assertion and control. I have been an expatriate since 1998. For the first time, I feel grounded in one place, while countries close borders for fear of the other, the non-national who carries COVID-19. I am shattered, as I witness the demise of global mobility, a life ideal I have treasured. Time and place are at a standstill during the pandemic. Self-confined in my Plato’s cave, life does not feel real. These works for open call-covid 19 show views from my balcony, where I experience what is lost from the open world I once believed in. Their surface conveys my fainting hope for reconciliation and masks rather than reveals my resentment against mandatory lockdowns, the fear of others and post-human disembodied interaction.