Joining the blue-chip offerings at Frieze Los Angeles next week is an art-filled mutual aid colouring book that seeks to make a big impact. Published by Dreamsong, the Minneapolis-based gallery exhibiting in the fair’s Focus section, sales of the $25 colouring book will support Minnesota’s Immigrant Rapid Response Fund. The gallery launched the project in response to the deadly Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) deployment in Minneapolis, which resulted in widespread violence against residents, including the killings of two US citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti.
“The state of Minnesota has been collectively traumatized at a deep, cellular level,” Rebecca Heidenberg, one of Dreamsong’s co-founders, tells The Art Newspaper. “This occupation has had an incalculable impact on every single person here and the repercussions will be ongoing for a long time. Besides the separation of families, the legal battles to repatriate them and the persecution and arrest of constitutional observers, there will be ongoing massive economic effects for families trying to make rent, immigrant-run businesses who were forced to close and to the city as a whole.”
Looking for ways to support the community, Dreamsong began helping locals put together art kits for families sheltering at home. Leading up to Frieze Los Angeles (26 February-1 March), Christine Messineo, Frieze’s director for the Americas, reached out to the gallery to offer general support, inspiring Dreamsong to take their outreach further.
Coloring book page by Alexa Horochowski Courtesy of the artist and Dreamsong, Minneapolis
“The [colouring book] project had been a seed in my mind and her offer encouraged me to get into gear,” Heidenberg says. “I saw an opportunity to reach a huge number of people, connect our communities through art, and raise funds that we could bring back home.”
Dreamsong gathered 32 Minnesotan artists to contribute drawings, including Alexa Horochowski, Xavier Tavera Castro, Alec Soth and Dyani White Hawk. The gallery is offering the colouring book for free to families and schools in the Minneapolis area.
“I live in South Minneapolis, a neighbourhood renowned for its social and ethnic diversity, where art and activism are inextricably linked,” says Horochowski. “The killing of Renée Good by Ice agents, a mere ten blocks from George Floyd Square, was a shock and also eerily familiar. As a ten-year-old Argentinean immigrant, I experienced the powerlessness of not knowing English. The deeper terror that undocumented families experience—hiding, too afraid to leave the house to work or to send their kids to school—is beyond my comprehension.”
Horochowski’s contribution to the colouring book is a drawing of an eagle feather. “Practically speaking, the feather is similar to the quill pens used to write the US Constitution and represents strength, wisdom and freedom for First Nations people,” she says. “Visual language transcends language barriers, offering an opportunity for collective joy.”
Tamar Ettun's assemblage sculpture Mother of Otherness (2026) will be featured on Dreamsong's stand in the Focus section of Frieze Los Angeles Courtesy of the artist and Dreamsong, Minneapolis
The colouring book is available online, as well as on Dreamsong’s stand at Santa Monica Airport, where the gallery will be presenting new sculptures and wall assemblage pieces by the Brooklyn-based artist Tamar Ettun that explore ancient healing rituals and contemporary fights for reproductive health and autonomy. The gallery will also distribute a free zine by Ettun made with Lizzie Presser titled “What We Learned Making a Kid Zone For Mutual Aid Distribution” based on work they did with Kid Zone Distro, an organisation that supports asylum seekers in New York.
With the mutual aid colouring book, Heidenberg hopes to offer a message of love and solidarity. “I am so proud of the people of Minneapolis and their resistance to Ice, and I am proud to call it home,” she says. “The solidarity, the incredible organising and the fearless commitment to justice that I have witnessed here has been awe-inspiring. I hope the colouring book will bring our collective spirit into people's homes and speak to them as they colour. Beyond supporting our community, the book is also an invitation to meditate on this historical moment in a really urgent, beautiful way.”
