For several hours Thursday morning, Mexican artist Bosco Sodi invited people in Washington Square Park to help construct his art installation — a substantial brick wall. He then invited people to come back later in the afternoon to help dismantle it. 

For several viewers who passed by, the one-day installation called Muro, or Wall, invoked thoughts about the Trump administration's anti-immigration policies, like the President's plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico, and his recent roll-back of protections for young immigrants living in the U.S.

Sodi himself said the work is open to interpretation. "What I want to show is that any wall can be dismantled when there is civic action and the community gets together," he said.  

Brenda Carpenter, from Amityville, Long Island, was taking pictures in front of the wall on Thursday.

"I feel like it's symbolic of all the walls that are going up all over the world right now," she said. "We're living in an age where walls are supposed to be coming down, not going up."

Alice Klughertz, who lives nearby, said she was especially moved by the installation amid the current political climate, and was struck by the artist's invitation to the public to help deconstruct the piece.

"[I hope that] they think about art's relationship to politics, that they get moved in a visceral way by something that's so heavy and present and solid, and yet — we can take it back," she said.