By festooning foreboding razor wire with decorative flourishes of welcome, Icy & Sot invert a symbol of exclusion and fear. The effect is shocking in its embrace of joy and color and life; the surreal visual combining  two opposing views of a border that uses their contrast for unusual illumination.

Icy & Sot “Imagine A World Without Borders” Miami, FL. January 2017 (photo © Icy & Sot)

In fact the brothers say this recent intervention in Miami is to address the surreality that we have been plunged into by forces who would divide us as citizens with fear-mongering, the ban on travel from majority Muslim countries and the presentation of a huge barrier wall across the southern boarder as a panacea.

Icy & Sot reliably put their finger into the wound to see how deep it goes. As artists they have also learned that a little truth goes a long way, especially when it’s an ugly truth. Maybe that explains the flowers. They tell us that because the constant flow of bad news about immigration and the government actions they weren’t able to focus and work on their future projects for a couple of days but instead they just wanted to make works in response to those actions.

Icy & Sot “Imagine A World Without Borders” Miami, FL. January 2017 (photo © Icy & Sot)

“This country couldn’t have been great without its immigrants,” they tell us in a statement. As recent immigrants themselves, they feel the topic very personally. “It’s not fair that one persons decision can affect the lives of so many people inside and outside the country – we are some of those people who have been affected. We came here as immigrants and what we have accomplished here we couldn’t have accomplished anywhere else but its sad that we don’t feel the same anymore.”

Of their new art piece, they say, “Barbed wire has long been connected to crimes against humanity. A person trying to pass through or over barbed wire will suffer discomfort and possibly injury,” they say of the razor coil that often entangles a those who attemp to cross it. “In our piece we change the barbed wire into flowers, which is a metaphor for welcoming people at the borders.”

“We wanted to show how beautiful it could be to imagine a world without borders.”

Icy & Sot “Imagine A World Without Borders” Miami, FL. January 2017 (photo © Icy & Sot)