In It’s Just Ice, Mara Espinosa Erda walks through the city center of Rome pulling a large block of ice tied to a red string.
The red thread, drawn from Japanese mythology, traditionally symbolizes a destined connection between two people, something unbreakable, regardless of time or distance. In this performance, Espinosa Erda ties that thread not to a person, but to something clearly ephemeral: a block of ice that melts as she moves forward.
It's Just Ice, 2025 (video) | performance, Rome
The piece is also shaped by El guardián del hielo, a poem by Peruvian writer José Watanabe. In it, a speaker is asked to care for a block of ice under the sun, a task that feels both absurd and deeply poetic. As the ice melts, the poem becomes a meditation on love, impermanence, and the quiet difficulty of letting go. “Oh, cuidar lo fugaz bajo el sol…” to care for what is fleeting under the sun.
It's Just Ice, 2025 | performance, Rome
This contradiction lies at the heart of the performance: binding a symbol of permanence to something destined to disappear. The sun and heat are not simply environmental factors but active forces, accelerating the inevitable. As Espinosa Erda moves through one of Rome’s busiest areas, the action unfolds almost invisibly, slow, fragile, and fading against a backdrop of constant motion.
It's Just Ice, 2025 | performance, Rome
It’s Just Ice reflects on the vulnerability of emotional labor, on gestures made knowing they will vanish. What remains is not the ice, but the act of persistence, a wet trail, a question left behind:
How long do we hold on, even when we know it won’t last?
It's Just Ice, 2025 | performance, Rome
Photos by Samantha Scheidler
Videos by Vincent Jernev