LOS ANGELES — In response to the ICE raids and subsequent protests that started final week in Los Angeles, a number of arts organizations have made statements in solidarity with immigrants and activists. On Monday, 4 artwork areas situated in downtown LA — the Japanese American Nationwide Museum, Chinese language American Museum, LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, and Grand Performances — issued a joint assertion calling the occasions of final weekend a “manufactured disaster.”
“We oppose the unjust mass deportations of immigrants and the unconstitutional presence of the army in our metropolis,” the assertion reads. “We absolutely help the group’s proper to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard. Whereas there could also be people whose objective is to instigate violence and chaos, they aren’t the bulk, and we don’t want folks to worry coming into downtown Los Angeles. It’s the coronary heart of one of the vital various cities on the planet, the place everyone seems to be welcomed.”
Others adopted go well with, together with the Social and Public Artwork Useful resource Heart (SPARC), a gaggle devoted to the preservation of public artwork and social justice based by muralist Judy Baca. In a assertion on Instagram, the group declared “unwavering solidarity with our immigrant communities, including, “We’re appalled by the continued assaults and rhetoric that search to dehumanize and divide […] Please keep protected. You aren’t alone. We stand with you.”
Vacation spot Crenshaw, the bold public artwork challenge unfolding in a traditionally Black space of South LA, additionally vowed unwavering solidarity with folks impacted by the federal authorities’s actions. “Our hearts are with each household dealing with injustice, each mum or dad apprehensive for his or her baby’s security, and each particular person who deserves to dwell with dignity, safety, and peace,” the group posted on Instagram, additionally sharing an inventory of authorized help and immigration sources. So did the Vincent Worth Museum of Artwork, situated in predominantly Latinx Monterey Park, east of LA.
In an e mail assertion on Tuesday, June 10, the Museum of Latin American Artwork (MOLAA) in Lengthy Seashore additionally equally expressed “solidarity with our group—particularly our immigrant neighbors and people impacted by present exercise.”
“We reaffirm our dedication to inclusion, respect, and the appropriate of each particular person to really feel protected within the place they name residence,” the museum added. “We urge everybody to remain knowledgeable, be vigilant, and help one another with compassion and braveness.”
Although impacted by the curfew imposed on downtown LA, the Institute of Up to date Artwork, Los Angeles (ICA) dedicated to offering “a protected house and a spot of welcome for folks of all backgrounds and experiences.”
“We stand in solidarity with these peacefully protesting the unjust deportation of undocumented immigrants and the unconstitutional army presence in our metropolis,” ICA added in a assertion.
Hollywood home gallery 839 issued a direct enchantment to LA Mayor Karen Bass on , imploring her to instruct LAPD to “arrest federal brokers violating the civil rights of Angelenos.”
“Authorized precedent exists for native jurisdictions to carry federal actors accountable once they break state regulation or act outdoors constitutional bounds. If Bass is not going to act to guard her folks, she will probably be complicit,” the gallery added, alongside a picture with the slogan “ICE out of LA.”
Whereas these statements got here from principally smaller and impartial arts organizations, there was a noticeable silence so removed from the town’s bigger arts establishments together with LACMA, MOCA, the Hammer, the Getty, and the Broad. (None of those establishments responded to Hyperallergic’s request for remark by press time.)
Along with declarations of help and outrage, different organizations have taken extra direct motion. Because the starting of the yr, the nonprofit Self-Assist Graphics has been providing immigrant rights workshops and distributing “Know Your Rights” posters, additionally accessible totally free obtain on their web site.
“There’s instant motion, however afterwards there’s a seamless want. How can we proceed supporting the group past this very second?” requested Natalie Godinez, government director of binational artwork and advocacy group Artwork Made Between Reverse Sides (AMBOS). This ranges from being a hub to distribute info, month-to-month fundraisers to help already-established help teams, and connecting with networks in Mexico to help folks as soon as they’re deported. “The spectrum of assist is very large, from giving cash, to utilizing our our bodies, to data technology,” AMBOS founder Tanya Aguiñiga informed Hyperallergic.
Artists, too, have lent their help, creating new work, or in lots of circumstances sharing work produced over the previous a number of years highlighting the sustained and rising anti-immigrant rhetoric within the nation. Patrick Martinez handed out about 50 of his indicators studying “DEPORT ICE” and “THEN THEY CAME FOR ME” in neon letters eventually Sunday’s protest in Downtown LA.
“It could be simple for me as an artist to compartmentalize all of those catastrophes on the planet that we’re all witnessing and focus on my artwork profession, however that’s not how I function,” Martinez informed Hyperallergic. “The 2 go hand in hand, once I make work it’s to symbolize the time we live in.”
After SEIU President David Huerta was arrested on prices of impeding immigration crackdowns at an LA Protest on Friday, Lalo Alcaraz revamped a portray of the labor chief he had created, including the textual content “Free David Huerta” and “Present ICE LA Puerta!” The union printed up posters with the picture, and it was featured prominently at a rally on Monday calling for Huerta’s launch. (He was launched later that day on a $50,000 bond.) “I hope it helped folks really feel empowered to demand that David be launched,” Alcaraz informed Hyperallergic. “Photos like this will additionally merely inform folks that one thing is happening within the information that they may and must be curious about.”
One paintings that was created a long time in the past, however which featured prominently in a lot of the current tumult, is Barbara Kruger’s “Untitled (Questions)” (1990/2018). The enormous wall work which asks “Who’s Past the Regulation? Who’s Purchased and Offered? Who’s Free to Select?…” and different questions concerning liberty, energy, and patriotism, was beforehand put in on the south wall of MOCA (now the Geffen Up to date at MOCA), and repainted on the constructing’s north wall in 2018. It served as a backdrop for scores of pictures capturing the current clashes between police and protesters, offering eerie echoes of Gary Leonard’s iconic picture of three Nationwide Guardsmen in entrance of the mural through the 1992 LA Rebellion. When requested whether or not she was dismayed that historical past appeared to be repeating itself, Kruger supplied a blunt response. “NO ONE must be stunned or shocked by any of this,” she wrote in an e mail to Hyperallergic. “And if they’re, their failure of creativeness has helped deliver us to this fateful and tragic second. That is the tip of one thing.”
Nadya Tolokonnikova was within the midst of her durational efficiency Police State at MOCA Geffen when the protests erupted. The museum closed early on Sunday as a result of unrest, however Tolokonnikova stayed and continued her efficiency to an empty gallery. “I really feel this very tangible, visceral solidarity between folks affected by the police state in part of the world the place I’m from — and right here, within the US, the place households are torn aside, moms arrested and deported whereas selecting their children up from college, kids crying for assist as their fathers are dragged away,” she wrote on Instagram. As if echoing Kruger, she added, “I’m pondering how the Western concept that historical past inevitably strikes towards progress is a mirage. There’s no assure of a greater tomorrow.”
One other paintings created simply earlier than final Friday’s raids took on an surprising significance in mild of what would observe. Utilizing ice and soil, artist Kiyo Gutierrez constructed a large-scale message studying “NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL” on the banks of the LA River. Gutierrez obtained her MFA from the College of Southern California final month and had supposed to stay in LA, however the present administration’s tightening of visa restrictions are forcing her to return to her native Mexico.
“As if guided by a premonition, the ritual was carried out final Thursday, June fifth, 2025, simply sooner or later earlier than the devastating ICE raids in Los Angeles that tore households aside. The bodily repetitive gestures required to compose the signal, like banging heavy baggage of ice towards the concrete, then delicately but urgently inserting the cubes earlier than they soften, and at last gently masking them with soil, echo the resilience, care, and relentless urgency that outline the immigrant expertise,” she informed Hyperallergic. “Could synthetic man-made borders soften like ice beneath the solar, flowing away with the rivers’ currents, and will we always remember that NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL and no one must be criminalized for crossing ‘borders’ on stolen land.”
