I started graduate school 1989 and it was a momentous time… a friend of mine, a year later, went to Germany to do his research and I told him to bring back a piece of the wall for me…

In 1989 when that happened… there was this really wonderful sense of optimism that we were actually going to get somewhat past some of the wars, and difficulties, and struggles… You did hope that maybe there wasn’t going to be genocide, at least in Europe, ever again. And subsequently we found out that that’s not the case. Actually today when there are protests going on in Hong Kong, and unrest in Ukraine… I sometimes look at this and think about the small role that this little piece of concrete played in that history of freedom and the struggle for justice…

…I guess I would put it in the Museum of Courage Against Brutality where this little yellow paint [on one side of the wall], like a bit of the sun after a dark night, is that bit of hope, and optimism, and courage against a very brutal concrete wall that was meant to prevent it.

Exhibited by Frank Valadez

Transcript edited by Sarah Crawford