On July 12, 2025 Tanya Quick shared her human mindedness through a stunning time-based installation. The artwork is about the bigness of mother nature as well as the intimacy of ourselves and asks us to consider what it means to be “worth our salt.” She did this through stick-with-you video portraits of acquaintances sharing stories and reactions to recent events, alongside portraits of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The video projections are paired with two piles of road salt to elevate the common element between.
Then in October, midway through her exhibition, federal ICE raids began to take over our neighborhoods. Instead of using our streets to connect us, they became dangerous to been seen in. Parks began to empty and the space just in front of this installation, a high school drop off zone, became a place of fear.
In accordance with Mayor Johnson’s establishment of “Ice Free Zones” at any city owned space, Facility joined in solidarity with an augmentation of “Salt” called “Salt Melts Ice.” We layered a lo-fi billboard declaring Facility as an ICE FREE ZONE to let our neighbors know Old Irving Park is a community of neighbors who are there for each other.
The “Salt” project is a now a time capsule of 2025’s political impact, as many emotions in the video portraits stem from personal reflections of this administration’s policies and how they will change the future for their communities.
Upon deinstallation of Quick’s exhibition, all of the road salt will be bagged up and coupled with an exhibition with a poster for distribution as give-aways in preparation of what is sure to be a tumultuous winter season.