Arts & Culture
7
Nicholas Galanin created a work from the same steel tubing used for the U.S.-Mexico border wall, echoing its 30-foot height and reassembling the metal to spell LAND in a format reminiscent of Robert Indiana's 1966 sculpture LOVE. Its upper letters incorporate the wall's anti-climbing plate, and the text repeats in four layers to form a dynamic, open structure that shifts between legibility and abstraction as the viewer's perspective changes. Galanin, a member of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, adapts elements of pop art and minimalism, including repetition, text, and industrial production, to protest oppressive systems of division and control. The bilingual title combines English and Spanish, languages imposed in North America since colonization, and the work asserts that Indigenous peoples persist across borders despite the forcible removal of rights, languages, and access to land and water. For Galanin, barriers to land directly reflect barriers to love, community, and future generations.
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