protest language

“If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”

James Baldwin’s quote about the artist’s role in society is emblazoned on billboards across Los Angeles this winter. Created by artist Patrick Martinez, the purpose of the signage is two-fold: to promote Frieze Los Angeles and, in the case of neon signs at the art fair’s entrance, to stand as a discrete work of art on its own.

Martinez, an East Los Angeles-based artist, has long translated protest language into storefront-style neon, a strategy he now extends into a broader campaign tied to Frieze, which runs Feb. 26 through March 1 at the Santa Monica Airport and features more than 100 galleries.

This year, however, some of the fair’s most compelling work may be happening outside the tent. Frieze Projects’ “Body & Soul” features eight installations staged across Santa Monica’s Airport Park and beyond. The initiative is intended, organizers say, to broaden the fair’s reach beyond its art world audience — positioning Frieze as a civic platform rather than a purely commercial event.

In addition to Martinez’s creations, “Body & Soul” brings together site-specific works including Amanda Ross-Ho’s durational performance rolling a 16-foot inflatable Earth around the perimeter of a nearby soccer field; Cosmas & Damian Brown’s interactive fountain installation incorporating ceramic heads, incense and water; and Shana Hoehn’s first large-scale public sculpture, fabricated from a fallen tree sourced through Santa Monica’s Urban Forest program. Off campus, Kelly Wall extends the program to a former Westwood Village newsstand, where glass “magazines” will be displayed — 136 in all, priced at $300, with 15 given away.

Martinez’s billboards bearing 2024’s “If I Love You (James Baldwin)” serve as the most highly visible part of the fair’s public outreach. His neon installations respond to ICE raids and immigrant rights, placing protest at the literal threshold of one of Los Angeles’ most visible art events.

L.A. artist Patrick Martinez’s work is featured on billboards around the city, as well as at the entrance to Frieze Los Angeles.

(David Butow / For The Times)

The public art program acts as “a way that we can bring in people who may not be just the ticket goers or the VIP,” said Christine Messineo, Frieze’s director of Americas.

It also serves to amplify the city’s cultural temperature.

“Our job is to represent what’s happening in our community,” Messineo said, adding that immigration and social impact are not anomalies at the fair but part of its foundation.

Some of Martinez’s neon entrance signs — including “Abolish ICE” (2018), “No Body Is Illegal” (2021) and “Then They Came for Me 2” (2025) — predate the current political moment. Instead, they emerge from years of observation and protest.

The artist credits Messineo with approaching him last summer to utilize what he calls his “urgent warning signs” as the face of the fair. Demonstrators also carried signs bearing Martinez’s imagery last June during protests against ongoing federal immigration crackdowns in downtown Los Angeles.

Those events, Martinez says, are not experienced evenly across the city — particularly by the well-heeled audience that attends Frieze and spends $85 to $106 for weekend general admission tickets.

Patrick Martinez, “If I Love You (James Baldwin),” 2024.

(artwork Patrick Martinez / photo Paul Salveson)

Martinez wants his signs to unsettle viewers who are insulated from the city’s unrest.

“The Westside people aren’t even going to see any of that, right? So it’s bringing that kind of mindfulness to that space.”

“It felt prescient then,” Messineo said of engaging Martinez last year, “and I think even more so now.”

Frieze has integrated public art into its Los Angeles fair since its 2019 debut. But the works in “Body & Soul,” produced with the nonprofit Art Production Fund, lean into the particular conditions of public space.

The exhibition brings together Los Angeles artists exploring ideas of memory, community and collective experience — often in quieter ways than Martinez’s overt messaging.

Additional participants include Dan John Anderson, Polly Borland and Kohshin Finley.

Casey Fremont, Art Production Fund’s executive director, said most of the works are newly commissioned.

The program is designed to prioritize innovation over sales. “It isn’t transactional. It’s really just about experimenting and giving the public the opportunity to experience art like they’ve never experienced before.”

Artists scale up — and slow down

“Body & Soul” marks several participants’ first ventures into public work, including Hollywood artist Finley, whose “The Piano Player” will be installed near the corner of Airport Avenue and Donald Douglas Loop. Finley’s piece arranges ceramic vessels inside shadow-box shelving that the artist describes as containers for memory — some “you love to take out and peek into,” others that “should just stay shut forever.”

Kohshin Finley’s “The Piano Player” arranges ceramic vessels inside shadow-box shelving that the artist describes as containers for memory.

(Micaiah Carter)

The title references the film “Casablanca,” and its piano player, Sam, whose music stirs up memories of the central love story.

Finley said the public setting creates an unusually direct encounter as he, like many of his fellow artists, will be standing with his work.

“A lot of people have never seen a living artist,” he said.

Ross-Ho takes visibility even further with her inflatable soccer ball Earth, which weighs 78 pounds. The familiar “blue marble” image will no doubt draw spectators at the Airport Park Soccer Field outside the Frieze tent.

Amanda Ross-Ho is creating a durational performance on a soccer field by Frieze Los Angeles.

(Jennelle Fong for ILY2)

Ross-Ho’s performance, “Untitled Orbit (MANUAL MODE),” functions as an endurance test that is a response to what she calls “the temporal container of the art fair” — and to the pressures of contemporary life.

“Gesture and duration are the ways that I could achieve scale rather than something that was materially constrained like a giant sculpture,” she said.

Designing for gathering

Brown’s installation, “Fountain: Sources of Light,” invites guests to congregate. Positioned between the Airport Park playground and dog park, it combines running water, ceramic vessels, incense and sound.

“I really wanted to make a fountain because I thought that [it’s] something that … people tend to gravitate to,” he said.

The work will incorporate metal plates and bowls created by participants in the youth workshop Art Sundae, taking place Feb. 28 at Airport Park.

Near Brown’s fountain, Echo Park artist Hoehn will present “Deadfall,” a massive fallen fig tree embedded with carved cheerleader legs and skirts — imagery drawn from her Texas upbringing.

Shana Hoehn with one of her carved wooden sculptures.

(Josh Cohen)

“I’ve been working with cheerleading iconography for the past few years,” she said, linking the imagery to what she calls an omnipresent football culture layered with “American patriotism and militaristic qualities.”

Hoehn acknowledged that the fair’s four-day window and limited nearby parking may keep the audience closer to fair-goers than the broader public the program aims to reach.

Beyond the airport fence

A few miles away in Westwood Village, Mar Vista artist Wall will extend the program beyond the airport campus with “Everything Must Go,” installed at a defunct newsstand and on view from 5:48 p.m. (sunset) to 8 p.m. during the fair.

Where magazines and newspapers once were, glass stand-ins bearing skyline imagery will occupy illuminated lightbox shelves. As the glass “magazines” are removed, glowing silhouettes mark their absence.

Kelly Wall, ‘Everything Must Go’.

(Kelly Wall)

Wall’s related project will appear on the Frieze campus with found newspaper boxes transformed into lightbox displays for her glass publication.

“In things coming to an end, there is no real end … there’s transformation,” she said. “How you might see [the piece] may differ depending on different times — or where you’re personally at in your life.”