Arts & Culture
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Nicholas Galanin created In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra from the same steel tubing used to construct the U.S.-Mexico border wall, echoing its 30-foot height. He cut and reassembled the metal to spell LAND in a format reminiscent of Robert Indiana's 1966 sculpture LOVE, using the border wall's anti-climbing plate on the upper letters and repeating the text in four layers to create 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 born in 1979 in Sitka and identified as Lingít and Unangax̂, practices subsistence in his homeland and sees the free movement of life as essential and all life as deeply connected to Land. Adapting elements of pop art and minimalism such as repetition, text, and industrial production, he uses the work to protest oppressive systems of division and control. Its bilingual title combines English and Spanish, languages imposed in North America since colonization, and the work affirms that Indigenous peoples persist and permeate borders despite the forcible removal of rights, languages, and access to Land and Water.
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