Art
14,000 & Counting Missing Childhoods
- Client: 72andSunny
- Campaign: 72U Immigration
- Exhibition Type: Public Art Installation
- Location: Venice Beach Windward Plaza, CA
- Year: 2018
- Role: Artist
14,000 & Counting Missing Childhoods is a large-scale public art installation that visualized the significant increase in immigrant children detained by the U.S. government in 2018. The number rose from 2,400 in 2017 to over 14,000 in one year, representing children separated from their homes, families, and communities, and deprived of their formative experiences.
The installation consisted of thousands of custom milk cartons, referencing the missing children campaigns that circulated throughout the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s. Each carton served as a symbolic proxy for an immigrant child held in detention, printed with text indicating what they were missing: family, community, freedom, and the fundamental conditions for healthy development.
Installed at Venice Beach Windward Plaza, the work transformed a public space into a site for awareness and critical reflection, making the scale of the crisis visible beyond policy language and media distance. It functioned as both a memorial and a prompt for civic engagement, underscoring the universal right of all children to safety, stability, and the opportunity to grow within the care of their families and communities.
