The year 2020 marked a moment of profound rupture in the United States. Political instability, economic collapse, and a global pandemic converged to expose deep structural inequalities that had long been present but often unacknowledged. COVID-19 halted daily life and revealed stark disparities in access to health care, labor protections, and safety. At the same time, immigration policies hardened, asylum pathways narrowed, and families were separated through systems that prioritized enforcement over care.

Environmental crises compounded this instability. Record wildfires, hurricanes, and climate-driven disasters underscored the fragility of both infrastructure and social systems. Against this backdrop, long-standing patterns of police violence and racial injustice came sharply into focus through the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Manuel Ellis, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others, including Latinx individuals such as Sean Monterrosa, Carlos Ingram-Lopez, and Andres Guardado. These losses revealed not isolated failures, but recurring conditions within systems struggling to sustain justice and accountability.

In cities across the country, people gathered in public space—often at personal risk during a pandemic—to express grief, anger, and a demand for change. These demonstrations, largely peaceful, unfolded amid heightened militarization and deep social polarization. Streets became sites of confrontation, not only between protestors and authorities, but between competing visions of safety, belonging, and the future.

¡¿XO?! (translated as Where is the love?) emerges from this moment as a work of reflection rather than resolution. The piece examines tension and proximity between opposing forces through the perspective of a drone—an observing presence hovering above an abstracted American street. From this vantage point, distance and closeness, convergence and separation, are rendered without assigning heroes or villains. The work asks how systems collide, how individuals are caught within them, and what becomes visible when we step back to observe patterns rather than positions.

Rather than advocating a singular political stance, the work invites viewers to consider shared responsibility and collective consequence. It asks how we arrived at this crossroads, and what it might take to move toward care, accountability, and connection. In a time defined by division, ¡¿XO?! offers space to pause, witness, and ask a question that remains unresolved but urgent: how do we find one another again?

Regardless of our political views, we have to do better than this.