As I write this, approximately 700 active-duty Marines, 2,100 California National Guard and 2,000 National Guard troops have been deployed to Los Angeles to quelch the anti-administration protests which began Friday in response to ICE raids and arrests of over 100 people. Aligned protests against the detention of undocumented immigrants have erupted in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and elsewhere.

Public art has a long history of participating in social protest, acting as a mirror and a megaphone for dissent, resistance, and systemic critique. From murals and monuments to collective performances and multivalent installations, artists resourcefully use public space to disrupt power, claim visibility, and reshape collective memory.

In our final How to Triennial guide, we take you to downtown Boston, where three Triennial artists situate their unique style of social protest.

New Red Order, *Material Monument to Thomas Morton (Playing Indian)*, Installation View at Faneuil Hall Marketplace Center, Boston Public Art Triennial, May 22-October 31, 2025. Photo: Caitlin Cunningham

NEW RED ORDER Material Monument to Thomas Morton (Playing Indian)
Location: Faneuil Hall Marketplace, thoroughfare at east end of South Market Street (across from the Greenway Carousel)
Parking: visit Faneuil Hall’s parking and public transit site
Public Transportation: visit Faneuil Hall’s parking and public transit site
Hours: 24/7
Amenities: restaurants, bars, shopping and historic visitor’s center

Thomas Morton was a colonial rebel, arriving in New England in the early 1620s, establishing the colony Merrymount, and inspiring resentment among Puritan leaders for unorthodox revelry and friendly relations with Natives. As a historical figure, Morton represents what early America could have become: tolerant, collaborative, and celebratory, rather than extremist and cruel. How different would our country’s history be if Thomas Morton had been allowed to lead and shape American values?

New Red Order, *Material Monument to Thomas Morton (Playing Indian)*, Installation view at Marketplace Center, Boston PublicArt Triennial, May 22-October 31, 2025. Photo: Caitlin Cunningham.

New Red Order is a boundary-pushing, decolonial “public secret society” that creates participatory, over the top video, sculpture, and performance to interrogate cultural appropriation and entrenched American desire for indigeneity. Led by Alaska-born Jackson Polys, who is Tlingit, and brothers Adam Khalil, 35, and Zack Khalil, 32, both of the Ojibwe tribe from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the group makes work which opens historical Native narratives up for examination and rewriting. NRO named themselves in response to the Improved Order of the Redmen, a racist fraternal society dating back to the 18th century.

“We aim to collectively advance understandings of how identity is conveyed and configured within contemporary art practices in order to create sites of acknowledgment that promote solidarity and shift obstructions to Indigenous growth.”

— New Red Order

With Material Monument to Thomas Morton (Playing Indian), NRO parodies and exalts the controversial New England figure who sold alcohol and firearms to the Native neighbors he excessively admired. The mixed media sculpture combines 3D-modeled and 3D-printed elements (which they call mimicry), handmade and found objects.

Comical, cartoonish and deeply unnerving, the looming Morton dances on two boxes of tea wearing a black Pilgrim hat covered in New England and Native symbols—lobster, oysters, watermelon, sage smudge sticks and an arrow with red fletching. Merton grins mischievously like a Cheshire cat, sports red war paint and wears a beaded Native style necklace over an Elizabethan ruffle collar. A pink gerber daisy tops the muzzle of his rifle. He is a mass of complicated contradictions.

Playing with the Tlingit sculptural tradition of “shame poles”—totem poles made to ridicule those who owed debts—NRO’s Material Monument to Thomas Morton has been called a “shameless pole.” By calling attention to Morton’s complicated story, New Red Order asks us to rethink colonial narratives of the past and act in compassionate solidarity with Indigenous people living today.

Patrick Martinez, *Cost of Living*, Installation view at Breaktime. Boston Public Art Triennial, May 22-October 31, 2025. Photo: Faith Ninivaggi.

PATRICK MARTINEZ Cost of Living
Location: Downtown Crossing, 63 Franklin Street, Boston
Parking: public parking available nearby
Public Transportation: visit the MBTA site for information on red and orange lines to DTX
Hours: visible 24/7
Amenities: restaurants, bars and shopping available in DTX. Public parks nearby.

According to the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s 2023–24 data, 31,605 children and youth experiencing homelessness were enrolled in public schools statewide, and of these 1,908 were unaccompanied (not living with a parent or guardian). “Youth” here describes 14-24 year olds, arguably the most vulnerable unhoused population. Despite government programs like the Massachusetts State Plan to End Youth Homelessness and Homeless Youth Services, our state ranks high in the nation, and unaccompanied youth homelessness has risen almost 25% since pre-pandemic levels.

Los Angeles-based artist Patrick Martinez makes work which draws attention to the overlooked beauty of urban environments and the resilience of those living on the margins. His Triennial project Cost of Living addresses the persistent problem of youth homelessness and America’s stubborn social and political indifference.

A series of neon artworks made in the style of storefront small business signage, Cost of Living features provocative sayings generated through conversations with Bostonians experiencing homelessness. Martinez collaborated with Breaktime, a nonprofit committed to ending the cycle of youth homelessness by providing employment, wraparound services and financial support.

Aesthetically Matinez’s practice reflects the life of the street, urban environments and interactions often considered shady or undesirable by mainstream society. Look for his work in multiple windows downtown.

Signs are a rich symbol of American protest. Martinez’s phrases mimic those painted on handmade signs used in demonstrations and marches. “People over Profit” “No Job No Home” and “Affordable Housing Now” articulate the indisputable nature of ALL citizen’s inalienable rights and a call for awareness and action.

Adela Goldbard, *TLJ (The Last Judgment - El Juicio Final)*, photo: Dan Williamson & Ji Yang, courtesy of the Boston Public Art Triennial.

ADELALA GOLDBARD Invadieron por mar, respondemos con fuego. Un presagio. (They invaded by sea. We responded with fire. An Omen)
Location: Boston City Hall
Parking: public parking available nearby
Public Transportation: take the Green or Blue line to Government Center
Hours: M - F, 9am - 5pm
Amenities: restaurants, bars and shopping nearby. Faneuil Hall across the street.

In news coverage of the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles yesterday, dramatic orange flames engulfed the carcass of a Waymo driverless car. The flames were shocking but also impossible to resist. Again and again the image appeared on screens across the country and probably the world. Fire is both violent and cathartic. Watching something burn can be viscerally satisfying, and destruction can lead to relief.

Adela Goldbard is an artist and scholar from Mexico which has a rich tradition of processing collective grief through destruction and fire. Goldbard builds on this tradition in her interdisciplinary practice. She reconstructs painful historical and contemporary events using life-sized effigies and then, gratifying her audience with spectacle, blows them up. Goldbard’s sculptures are often woven from an invasive reed species called Phragmites which are responsible in many parts of Mexico and the United States for choking out native species, an apt metaphor for colonialism.

Her Triennial project Invadieron por mar, respondemos con fuego. Un presagio. (They invaded by sea. We responded with fire. An Omen) is a quarter-scale replica ship designed in the style of those sent by European nations to conquer the New World. Goldbard worked with artisans from Tultepec, an area north of Mexico City known for its pyrotechnics. She also enlisted members of the Wampanoag tribe of southeastern Massachusetts for their expert weaving skills and incorporated Peruvian shipbuilding techniques from Lake Titicaca. She aptly calls the project, which will be installed in City Hall in August, “a collaborative anticolonial exercise.”

In a public ritual, Goldbard will burn the ship on Boston’s City Hall Plaza in September. This nod to Mexican pyrotechnic tradition will transform the destructive Phragmites into harmless smoke and flames, a small but symbolic act of protest delivered with bold artistic agency. Goldbard will bring the community together to be cleansed by fire and empowered by fiery transformation.

Yu-Wen Wu, *We Belong*. Installation view Boston City Hall. Photo: Robin Hauck.

While we wait for Goldbard’s work to be installed, we can enjoy the continued exhibition in City Hall of Yu-Wen Wu’s neon sculpture We Belong.

We Belong is an LED neon public art installation encouraging ideas of belonging and inclusion among communities in Boston.

If you ever doubted whether contemporary art can effectively address current events and politics, head downtown this summer and consider the installations by Adela Goldbard, Patrick Martinez and New Red Order. The work the Boston Public Art Triennial has assembled in downtown Boston directly and powerfully speaks to the angst felt by artists, immigrants, and native citizens in our country today. Colonial themes of hegemonic control, cultural repression and appropriation and political indifference animate the work and transform touristy or bureaucratic downtown sites into catalysts for social change.

Don’t forget to visit the Triennial site for more information, and to use the Triennial map to chart your course from art work to artwork.

Hero Image: New Red Order, Material Monument toThomas Morton (Playing Indian), Installation View at Marketplace Center, Boston Public Art Triennial, May 22-October 31, 2025. Photo: Caitlin Cunningham. Courtesy of The Boston Public Art Triennial