Where it all started…..
When the news first broke about children being separated from their families at the Mexico border, I was unable to watch. I had to leave the room whenever a TV was on. I scrolled quickly passed any mention on social media. Having suffered separation trauma at a very young age myself, I struggle with anxiety, depression, and behavioral problems. Knowing that a lifetime of these struggles was being deliberately inflicted upon these children in the name of fascism was too much to hear. My heart was very heavy.
I knew I would have to look at some point, though. And I knew I had to do something.
I decided I would make art to protest the Trump administration’s deliberate political cruelty, while letting immigrant families know that their children are precious to us, and we will not forget them. I thought of childrens shoes. Throughout the 20th Century, American families had their baby’s first shoes electroplated. The bronzed baby shoes became a sacred reminder of their children’s first steps — a keepsake preserving a precious memory for generations to come.
In sharp contrast, empty shoes have had multivalent and historically situated meanings. Auschwitz Holocaust memorial sites have re-enacted the concentration camp shoe piles in order to evoke an unintelligible sense of loss. In Budapest 60 iron shoes were set in cement along the Danube River to honour the Jews who were killed by fascist Arrow Cross militiamen during World War II. They were ordered to take off their shoes, and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river and were carried away. The installation leaves the public with the ghastly visual of their shoes left behind on the bank. Just this year, in the shadow of the Capitol dome, a sobering display of thousands of pairs of shoes were organized neatly across the grass to represent children who have died in the US from gunshot wounds since the Newtown elementary school massacre in 2012. The commonality in these works is what the shoes represent. Most often they remind us of someone’s absence.
I began by collecting 100 children’s shoes and spray painting them bronze. I hung the first installation on a cyclone fence facing the entrance to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building. An occupation of the area near the ICE Building had started on June 17, 2018, and when the landlord of the property where I hung the shoes took them down and threw them into the street, activists from the camp rescued the shoes and strung them around the entrance to the camp, as a symbol of their movement.
I placed more shoes near the 4th Avenue entrance to Portland City Hall, attaching them with zip ties to anything available. They were taken down of course, although somehow the security guards missed a few installed on the garden memorial stand which reads “Better Together.” The following day as protesters gathered to attend a City Council meeting, the woman who headed the security force tried cutting down the remaining shoes with a pair of scissors. A teenaged activist I didn’t even know at the time stood for almost 20 minutes protecting the shoes, guarding them, letting the woman know that he was not leaving. He would stand there all day if he had to.
Other activists re-hung shoes in nearby trees, on newspaper boxes and bike racks. People stood up for the shoes, defending them even at risk of arrest. Across the street near Terry Shrunk Plaza a minor was arrested and a 15-month-old baby was maced while his mother was attempting to defend the shoes.
I have been installing bronze shoes throughout the city since that first hot day in July at the ICE Building. Many others have joined me in my resistance. I have sent packages of shoes out of state and to nearby cities for people to hang themselves. Myself and a group of comrades hung shoes at the NORCOR Detention Facility in The Dalles. I also installed some in Mayor Ted Wheeler’s front yard (allegedly). The shoes have been exhibited in local galleries using the platform to speak about the oppression and cruelty acted out by our racist government. These varied curations have allowed me to speak up for the children and their families and about the atrocities acted upon them, in the only way I am able to without breaking under the weight of the sadness.
With good intentions people continually thank me for my work. But the shoes are not about me. They have become a symbol of these immigrant children, a reminder for all of us. A promise to their families.
As equal human beings in this age of institutionalized cruelty, we must shine a light on these injustices and fight for the human rights of all.
