LABOR ART OF THE WEEK: Ice and soil/hielo y tierra
Chris Garlock | Published on 1/1/2026
The day before mass ICE raids swept across LA, and mere weeks before tightening visa restrictions forced her to return home to Mexico, artist Kiyo Gutiérrez staged what she calls a “ritual-performance” on the bank of the LA River. Using ice and soil, she spelled out “No Human Is Illegal” through a sequence of meticulous, physically taxing gestures: breaking ice, arranging the cubes before they dissolved, then covering them with earth. As the ice melted, carrying the sediment into the rushing current, the work enacted the ambiguity of artificial borders and the precarity of those who cross them. The image’s disappearance, even as it was being made, captured the unresolved state in which countless lives still hang today. See more in How Artists Responded to 2025’s Surging ICE Raids in ArtNews.
Photo : Pistor Orendain/Courtesy the artist