--- title: Artist Building Cheese Wall at Border to Protest Trump description: A conceptual artist is building a wall made of cotija cheese at the Mexican border to protest Donald Trump's border wall. canonical: https://time.com/5560608/cheese-wall-mexico/ author: Cady Lang article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-03-28T19:08:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:58:26.116Z og:title: Artist Building Cheese Wall at Border to Protest Trump og:description: Yes, really og:url: https://time.com/5560608/cheese-wall-mexico/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt111601a36eb3e65f/6989477fb3fce3d02f0c35ef/artist-building-cheese-wall-at-border.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2000 og:image:height: 1125 og:image:alt: Cotija cheese. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Artist Building Cheese Wall at Border to Protest Trump twitter:description: Yes, really twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt111601a36eb3e65f/6989477fb3fce3d02f0c35ef/artist-building-cheese-wall-at-border.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Artist Builds a Wall Made of Cheese to 'Make America Grate Again' > Sponsored content. 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It curates the day's top headlines with TIME's reporting and analysis across politics, world affairs, business, health and culture. It is free to join at time.com/newsletters. #### How do I sign up for The Brief? The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/newsletters?i=00c65440-0f6e-4c9a-8dd1-98420cb10aa6&cr=time-nl-brief-2026q3-v1)  by [Cady Lang](https://time.com/author/cady-lang/)  ## Cady Lang Mar 28, 2019 7:08 PM UTC  Cotija cheese with cilantro on cutting board . Cotija cheese with cilantro on cutting board . snyferok—Getty Images/iStockphoto  by [Cady Lang](https://time.com/author/cady-lang/)  ## Cady Lang Mar 28, 2019 7:08 PM UTC A conceptual artist is using Cotija cheese to critique Donald Trump’s [proposed wall for the U.S./Mexico border](http://time.com/5549023/donald-trump-border-wall-emergency-public-health/), promoting his efforts with the slogan, “Make America Grate Again.” Los Angeles-based artist Cosimo Cavallaro has started construction on his cheese wall, which he hopes will stand at 1,000 feet long and 6 feet high when completed. On the [website](https://www.cheesewall.com/faq) for his project, Cavallaro notes that he was inspired to start the project because of the current political climate, although its intent is less about taking a side than it is about recognizing that people are the same no matter what side of the border they are on. “This is a wall of resolutions; by communicating with each other, we can reach a better outcome,” he writes. Cavallaro currently has a [GoFundMe](https://www.gofundme.com/the-cheese-wall) for the cheese wall, with the goal of raising $300,000 to fund the materials, labor and land rental for the piece; the blocks of cheese, although expired, cost $100 each, something he notes on his website is “much less than the $10 billion it may take to build other walls.” Cavallaro, whose work for the past 20 years has included the use of perishables, knows that it seems wasteful to create a wall made of cheese, which is exactly his goal. “You can see the waste in this \[cheese\] wall, but you can’t see the waste in a $10 billion wall?” he told [McClatchy news service](https://www.bnd.com/news/nation-world/national/article228451564.html) in an interview, noting that the perishable wall parallels the ephemeral nature of other borders. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5560608/cheese-wall-mexico/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5560608/cheese-wall-mexico/"},"headline":"Artist Builds a Wall Made of Cheese to 'Make America Grate Again'","datePublished":"2019-03-28T19:08:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:58:26.116Z","description":"Yes, really","url":"https://time.com/5560608/cheese-wall-mexico/","keywords":["Newsfeed","viral","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt111601a36eb3e65f/6989477fb3fce3d02f0c35ef/artist-building-cheese-wall-at-border.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Cady Lang","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/cady-lang/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt111601a36eb3e65f/6989477fb3fce3d02f0c35ef/artist-building-cheese-wall-at-border.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Cotija cheese.","caption":"Cotija cheese.","creditText":"snyferok—Getty Images/iStockphoto","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5560608/cheese-wall-mexico/","name":"Artist Builds a Wall Made of Cheese to 'Make America Grate Again'"}}]}] ```