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Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA

Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA

Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA

Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA

Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA

Donde piso, crecen cosas
(Where I step, things grow)

October 11, 2025 ➽ March 01, 2026
Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California

Full text in Spanish and translations in English and French.

In this site-specific mural, Liz Hernández draws from her lived experience to address the ongoing attacks on immigrant and undocumented populations across the United States. Through a patchwork of words and images, Donde piso, crecen cosas (Where I step, things grow) (2025) offers a narrative expressing Hernández’s complex feelings, which are both deeply personal and communally resonant: fear and uncertainty, resolve and survival, care and solidarity.

A multidisciplinary artist working across painting, drawing, sculpture, and embroidery, Hernández’s process often begins with writing. The text featured in Donde piso, crecen cosas (Where I step, things grow) is at once poetic and conversational, offering an intimate glimpse into the narrator’s observations, reflections, and emotions. The prose is rendered alongside the artist’s singular lexicon of symbols and vignettes inspired by Mexican cultural traditions and crafts, legends and folktales, Catholic aesthetics, and her family memories. Iconography—such as the butterfly, widely associated with migration—is presented alongside metaphors of the artist’s own making. For example, cactus thorns adorn the body of the artwork’s recurring female figure, serving as symbols of protection and strength, while a silhouette seated at the dinner table alludes to the looming realities of loss.

Through forms of storytelling both tender and pointed, Hernández draws us in, revealing urgent truths and creating a space for recognition and contemplation. The work acknowledges the immeasurable state-sanctioned violence and hardship, while, as reflected in the title, also honoring the ways immigrant and undocumented communities continue to live, grow, and nourish one another amidst attempts to silence and to stifle.

—Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle, Curatorial Associate