NEW YORK, January 18, 2026 — For an entire day, from dawn to dusk on January 13, 2026, artist Maria De Victoria repeatedly sang the phrase “I’m not mad at you, dude” outside the New York field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), located within the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in Manhattan. The haunting performance, a silent vigil punctuated by the repeated refrain, drew attention to a recent and controversial incident involving federal authorities.
A Final Plea Echoed in Protest
The artist’s performance centers on the last words of a woman killed during an ICE operation, sparking debate about official narratives and the power of witness testimony.
- The phrase “I’m not mad at you, dude” became a rallying cry following the death of Renée Nicole Good.
- De Victoria’s performance isolates Good’s final words, challenging the context provided by authorities.
- The artist’s broader work explores themes of motherhood, visibility, and systemic inequalities.
Those words – “I’m not mad at you, dude” – were the last spoken by Renée Nicole Good, a poet and mother from Minneapolis, who was killed by an ICE agent on January 7, 2026, during a federal operation. A video, initially released by Alpha News and then shared by official Trump administration accounts, shows Good uttering the phrase moments before the agent opened fire while she was behind the wheel of her vehicle. Federal authorities have defended the use of force as self-defense, claiming Good was obstructing the operation and using her car as a weapon, a claim disputed by local officials.
In the days following Good’s death, the phrase appeared on placards, t-shirts, and banners at demonstrations in Los Angeles, Washington, and Chicago, before becoming the focal point of De Victoria’s performance in New York.
De Victoria, wearing a coat embroidered with the phrase, did not interact with onlookers during her day-long performance. The action, documented by observers, wasn’t simply a protest against abuse of power and violence, but a pointed commentary on how media—particularly video evidence—is used to construct official narratives. The artist’s work isolates Good’s final statement, stripping it from the broader context presented in the videos released by authorities.
What role do visual testimonies play in shaping public perception of events involving law enforcement? De Victoria’s performance highlights the ambiguity inherent in these narratives, questioning how selectively presented evidence can influence understanding.
This approach echoes the citizen-led investigations that followed the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. Following Floyd’s death, activists and researchers began collecting and disseminating videos and visual testimonies from multiple perspectives. Organizations like Bellingcat and Forensic Architecture meticulously verified over a thousand audiovisual contents related to the protests, documenting hundreds of instances of violence against civilians and journalists, all compiled on an interactive online platform.
De Victoria’s artistic practice is rooted in multimedia interventions and performances in unconventional spaces. Born in Lima, Peru, and now based in New York, she has created projects in bodegas, laundromats, and hardware stores. She’s hosted public meals with day workers and, during opening hours, cleaned the Queens Museum to make the often-invisible work of maintenance visible. During the pandemic, she walked the streets of New York dragging an oxygen tank to the Peruvian consulate, drawing attention to the health crisis in South America. In June 2024, during Pride Month, she sang for 24 consecutive hours at NYC AIDS Memorial Park, inviting others to join her in remembrance of those lost to the epidemic.
More recently, De Victoria’s work has centered on motherhood and the challenges faced by artist mothers. In 2024, she co-founded Artists & Mothers with curator Julia Trotta, an organization that provides grants specifically to cover childcare costs for artists who are also mothers. The project, as described by the organization, arose from De Victoria’s personal experiences and a recognition of the systemic lack of support for artist mothers: “We decided to carry out a feminist act and build it ourselves.” The goal is to provide concrete assistance during the early years of motherhood, when childcare demands can significantly impact an artist’s ability to continue their practice.
