SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Nearly every state holds a state fair, and Minnesota has one of the biggest in the country. For years, the crop art exhibition has been one of its most popular attractions. This year, many works on display portrayed what happened when federal immigration enforcement officers came to the state for the Trump administration's Operation Metro Surge. Minnesota Public Radio's Alex V. Cipolle reports.
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ALEX V CIPOLLE, BYLINE: On this day, hundreds of people are waiting outside the state fair's agriculture, horticulture building. It's home to the crop art exhibit. Joe Karlsson has been in line for an hour.
JOE KARLSSON: First of all, I'm shocked how long the lines are this year.
CIPOLLE: Karlsson says it's worth the wait. Crop art is one of the state's traditions. Participants must use seeds and plant parts from native crops in their design.
KARLSSON: It's, like, uniquely political. It's like art form born of the cold and, like, our agricultural traditions, a creative expression of - I don't know - the current sentiments that are happening here in Minnesota too.
CIPOLLE: Crop art has been part of the fair for decades. This year, there are a record-breaking 600 pieces. While many touch on pop culture and history, many others depict the Trump administration's anti-immigration surge. In the winter, thousands of immigration and border enforcement agents came to Minnesota with the stated purpose of deporting undocumented immigrants. It was a turbulent couple of months. So artist Jennifer Nelson decided to show Minnesota's turmoil by creating her version of Pablo Picasso's 1937 masterpiece, the anti-war painting "Guernica."
JENNIFER NELSON: What Picasso was doing was letting people know that when acts of war happen, when authoritarian governments kind of flex their muscles and go heavy handed, it is always regular people that paid the price. And I think we felt that really heavy in the Twin Cities this year.
CIPOLLE: Instead of Picasso's anguished horse, Nelson's piece depicts a rising loon. The loon is the Minnesota state bird, which became a symbol of community resistance during the surge. There are also images of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, two Minnesotans killed by federal agents, and Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy wearing a blue bunny hat, who was detained by ICE and...
NELSON: There are images that are protesters that are - one figure in the painting represents all the neighborhood watch people I would see lining the immigrant business corridor nearest my house.
CIPOLLE: Ike Whiting made five pieces of art in response to the ICE deployment. He points to one with a big orange whistle.
IKE WHITING: This represents a grassroots organization that was formed after the surge began as a group that offered legal observation, mutual aid, lots of support for the community of neighbors who were being harassed and stolen by the federal government. So this whistle represents the whistles that patrollers and observers had.
CIPOLLE: This year, one artwork proved to be especially controversial because it displayed the numbers 86, 47. A local media outlet and some people online viewed it as a threat, since using the number 86 broadly means to get rid of, and Trump is the country's 47th president. The artist, Tamara Sawyer, asked for the piece to be removed from the fair after being harassed online, and in a statement, said there is no threat intended, but they do want to see the president impeached and removed from office. Whiting says there is a rich history of crop art created in response to political and current events.
WHITING: There have always been pieces that talk about political things, right? Because that's what art does. Crop art is no different than any other art form.
CIPOLLE: Fairgoer Margaret Grosspietsch says it's cathartic to see the government's anti-immigration enforcement surge captured in crop art.
MARGARET GROSSPIETSCH: Things happened on our street. It was very real, and we don't want it lost. So for it to be memorialized and remembered is quite important.
CIPOLLE: The crop art exhibition at the Minnesota State Fair will be up through Labor Day. Many pieces can also be seen at cropart.com.
For NPR News, I'm Alex V. Cipolle in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, near the Twin Cities.
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