Un muro que parte el cuerpo en dos (A wall that breaks the body in two) is a durational performance in collaboration with Paul Donald, that was presented in Human Resources in Los Angeles on 2025. This work was first performed by Gutiérrez in 2018 in Guadalajara, México, as a response to the Mexican xenophobic reactions toward a Central American Migrant Caravan crossing the country. This new iteration is reactivated in the U.S., where harsh migration policies continue to criminalize movement and dehumanize the displaced.

In this piece, the wall is not static, it moves and breathes with the body, resisting fixity. It splits the performer in two, exposing the violence that borders enact on flesh, memory, and belonging. The wall is not neutral. It is built and upheld by governments, white supremacy, and systems of power that decide who is allowed to move, who is stopped, and who is erased. But over time, the performance reveals another truth: walls are porous. They crack, they shift, they hold holes. They can crumble.

This performance invites us to witness not only the pain of division, but the quiet, persistent possibility of undoing it. It is a gesture meant to honor and celebrate the undocumented, migrant, immigrant, refugee, and exilee communities, people who move, who resist, and who carry entire worlds with them.

Photography by Pistor Orendain