Optional Practical Trainees interrogates how U.S. visa systems shape the professional and creative trajectories of international art workers. Through critical gutoethnography, we explore the tension between rigid frameworks of immigration and precarious realities of artistic careers. The Optional Practical Training (OPT) forces young artists and cultural workers to constantly justify their legitimacy in an ecosystem demanding self-commodification and framing art as "practical" labor.

Co-authored by Dou and Kim, both of whom navigated the OPT process, this project blends personal narratives, institutional critique, and collective storytelling. It starts with our experiences of visa precarity and expands into a collective narrative from international art workers across visa statuses.

In the Fall of 2024, the two authors came together to ask: who are we "approved" to become under immigration regimes? What gendered and racialized dynamics emerge when personal choices intersect with professional aspirations? By interrogating the OPT system's "optional" impracticality, highlight how these structures reinforce exclusion and shape participation in the global art world. While discourse on precarity in creative industries is growing, our project sheds light on the specific intersections of immigration, legitimacy, and cultural production.