Rodrigo Valenzuela’s art draws upon his experience as a day laborer, a foreigner, and an artist longing to simply make art. In the series Masks, Valenzuela re-created and posed in the type of improvised tear-gas mask used by protestors in his native Chile. Valenzuela’s creation and subsequent performance celebrates the bravery and ingenuity of Chilean protestors, connects him to the struggles of his homeland, and echoes Valenzuela’s own scrappy construction of a life and career in the United States. Although the work was made in 2018, it finds new meaning as protestors have taken to the streets of America in recent years.