Herencia Laboral
Performance by Alkaid Ramirez
November 22, 2025. 2 to 4 P.M.
Herencia laboral explores labor aesthetically via experimental photography and performance. Ramirez’s installation includes a washer and dryer machine upon which Ramirez has inlaid various family archival photographs, as well as a deconstructed machine serving as a projection screen depicting a video of an audience-less action by which Ramirez explores his inheritance in the form of pride in labor, and the nuances of honoring legacy while questioning one’s relation to capitalism.
The work is an introspection on Ramirez’s family history, as his father taught Ramirez how to fix these machines at an early age. Every decision made by Ramirez for Herencia laboral braids his father’s and his own personal relationship to labor. This work honors the dedication and strength of our elders, while also bearing witness to the masculine father-son relationships built on passing down knowledge, and centering labor as a vital means to provide for generations to come. Utilizing labor as an aesthetic vernacular allows Ramirez to unapologetically affirm and celebrate his family’s history while challenging the very ties to labor that center among the Latinx communities in the United States.
“All you gotta do is see the world with new eyes.”
Fall of Freedom is an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation. Our Democracy is under attack. Threats to free expression are rising. Dissent is being criminalized. Institutions and media have been recast as mouthpieces of propaganda.
Art matters. Artists are a threat to American fascism.
