A new 30-foot sculpture unveiled last week in Brooklyn Bridge Park takes the form of a famous Pop Art work to stage a scathing critique of colonial violence.
Created by Nicholas Galanin, the bilingual title of the work, “In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra” (2023), refers to the two imperial languages spoken on both sides of the American-American border. mexican. Reminiscent of Robert Indiana’s iconic “To like(1964), the steel sculpture reads “Earth” in four layers of radiated text. The allusion to the iconic red symbol is a statement about how capitalist mass marketing and pop culture can be weaponized for propaganda nationalist.
Made of corten steel – the same material used for the infamous wall that runs along the southern border – the 34,000 pound structure is a powerful message for Galanin’s first public artwork in New York. It will remain on view in the 85-acre waterfront park until March 10, 2024.
“Pop Art was this movement that criticized fine art and was ironic,” Galanin said. “This work is critical of control and exclusion, presented in an accessible form through familiar visual language and very specific materials. This work is not whimsical or nostalgic as the text or pop art reference might suggest, so there is an incongruity with the material.
Additionally, while the rigid reality of the border walls restricts movement, Galanin’s Brooklyn sculpture allows viewers to walk through, passing through spaces between the sculpture’s massive letters. This freedom of movement is another allusion to Indigenous concepts of interconnected lands and communities, reminiscent of the artist’s own Lingít-Unangax̂ heritage.
“These borders are directly connected and linked to settler colonization and genocide and violence against Indigenous peoples on Indigenous lands,” Galanin said. Hyperallergic.
His sculpture in Brooklyn currently sits on Lenapehoking, which means “homeland of the Lenape”, which has its own history with border walls dating back to the 1600s. Then the Dutch colonizers built a wall around what was then New Amsterdam to force the Lenape people off the island. This wall eventually became Wall Street.
While his latest work makes explicit reference to the US-Mexico border, Galanin explained that “this work is relevant to any site on this continent” since everywhere has been affected by “these policies of exclusion and division”. .
Based in Alaska, Galanin frequently revolves his art around how the enduring imprint of colonialism affects Indigenous communities and land regions today. In 2021, for the Desert X biennial in Palm Springs, he constructed “Never Forget” (2021), an alternative Hollywood panel that instead read “Indian Land” to directly highlight Indigenous land rights in the United States and to raise funds for the Native American Land Conservancy. The project also involved calling upon “land-owning settlers” to participate in EarthBacka movement that supports indigenous sovereignty and the return of stolen lands.
“Indigenous care for land and community is rooted in a connection based on mutual sustainability. Rather than nationalism or capitalism, this perspective still embodies a deep respect for life beyond any generation,” Galanin said in a statement on his latest book.
“In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra” questions the barriers to the Earth, which directly reflect the barriers to love, love for the Earth, community and future generations”, he added.
