British artist Anish Kapoor’s shiny sculpture Cloud Gate (2006), sited in Chicago’s Millennium Park, is one of the world’s most popular works of public art. Often called “the Bean” in reference to its elliptical shape, the 110-ton piece has served as the setting for countless photo shoots by everyday visitors and celebrities alike.
Now, a more controversial visitor has exploited the work for a Windy City photo op. Just after dawn on Monday, dozens of U.S. Border Patrol agents gathered in front of the 66-foot-long piece, led by chief Gregory Bovino, a 25-year veteran of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. Area news outlet Block Club Chicago reports that the agents, in green fatigues and sporting large firearms, poured out of numerous SUVs just after 7 a.m.
One of the agents reportedly called out for his colleagues, in place of “cheese,” to say “Little Village,” referring to a neighborhood that is home to many Mexican Americans and where the Border Patrol deployed tear gas in an enforcement raid over the weekend. The Department of Homeland Security announced on X that the agency had arrested an undocumented Mexican immigrant in connection with a shooting targeting Border Patrol agents.
But the Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers Guild pointed the finger at the feds, saying in a statement, “Trump’s federal agents turned what would have been a quiet Saturday afternoon on the Southwest side of Chicago into a dangerous and unsafe environment due to their repeated and unnecessary escalations.” Local alderman Mike Rodriguez, who was on the scene over the weekend, said that he never heard the shots that were supposedly fired at federal agents.
Chicago governor J.B. Pritzker criticized the photo shoot and the evocation of Little Village. “Making fun of our neighborhoods and communities is disgusting,” he said on social media. “Greg Bovino and his masked agents are not here to make Chicago safer. As children are tear gassed and U.S. citizens detained, they are posing for photo ops and producing reality TV moments.”
Chicago artist Michael Rakowitz, likewise, was outraged by the shoot.
“It offers a portal through which to talk about the things every Chicagoan is enduring right now, which is a horrible invasion and occupation of our city by these paramilitary forces,” Rakowitz said. “I do think they are a Gestapo that are uprooting and targeting and intimidating our most vulnerable neighbors.”
Federal agents have been extremely aggressive in their immigration enforcement raids in Chicago, deploying helicopters in an overnight raid on an apartment complex, using chemical agents near public schools, and handcuffing a city councilmember at a hospital, as PBS has reported, noting that more than 1,000 immigrants have been arrested since federal agents descended on the city. Federal agencies have also repeatedly used images of their agents in Chicago in social media posts.
Anish Kapoor.
Photo George Darrell
Kapoor, the 1991 winner of the Turner Prize, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment, but he has pursued other organizations for using images of his work.
In 2018, Kapoor declared “victory” in a copyright infringement lawsuit against the National Rifle Association of America for using images of Cloud Gate in an online advertisement he called “abhorrent.” The NRA agreed to remove the image. The artist sought $150,000 in damages and a share of the NRA’s profits from new memberships after the ad aired. The suit was settled out of court, but the NRA said it did not compensate the artist.
Born in Mumbai to an Iraqi Jewish mother and an Indian father, Kapoor has been outspoken in his support of immigrants and refugees. At Los Angeles’s Union Station in 2017, during president Donald Trump’s first term, he unveiled a poster showing a self-portrait printed with the words “I Like America and America Doesn’t Like Me,” riffing on a famed Joseph Beuys artwork. That year, he pledged the $1 million reward that came with the Genesis Prize to organizations aiding Syrian refugees. In 2015, he had staged a walk across London with fellow immigrant artist Ai Weiwei to call attention to the refugee crisis.
Rakowitz did see an unintended benefit to the shoot, owing to the surface of Kapoor’s work.
“I’m furious beyond words but the one thing that I’m grateful for is the reflective quality of the sculpture, because in the photos that have emerged, a lot of those agents are unmasked and you can see them from all different angles, so this makes identifying them that much easier,” he said. “Clearly, looking into a mirror doesn’t bother them. But when it comes to us needing to know who these people are, they can’t hide from us.”
