There are currently around 14,500 people incarcerated in Washington State.1 How can we begin to understand the diverse identities and lived experiences of this group? How can we contemplate the chasms left in the families and communities on the outside and the complex lives and communities forged on the inside?
This exhibit seeks to put a face on those who are incarcerated, to offer a glimpse into the individuality and creativity within the prison environment. This effort brings an array of challenges. For instance, what does it mean to publicly display art created by people who are invisible to our communities at large? How do we acknowledge the trauma experienced by victims and the possibility that this display will compound that trauma? How can we truly fathom and genuinely acknowledge the enormous and inevitable power imbalance between artist and viewer in such an exhibit, an imbalance that is exacerbated by the physical separation inherent to digital formats where viewer and artwork are doubly distanced?
We have struggled with these questions and have found guidance in other exhibits where the curators grappled with the same or similar issues. Nicole Fleetwood, in her book Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, has written eloquently about how she decided to provide, or not to provide, information about the artists she includes in her work.2 An exhibit mounted by the organization Artists in Absentia framed the public/prison dichotomy in the following way: “[C]an the artwork generated in prisons be categorized as ‘public’ when the artists themselves are purposefully separated from that domain?” Furthermore, and this is even more vital in digital realms, they observe, “[T]hese works appear in a public venue where we can view them for free. Ironically, however, that which makes this art ‘public’ is also what renders it distinctly not public; it was made in a prison, an institution designed to separate the artists from the rest of society.”3
We have not resolved these issues; indeed, such questions may not be resolvable at all. But we have attempted to engage with them as honestly as possible at each step in the process of creating this exhibit. This display offers the works and the voices of the artists with as little filtration as possible, using the artists’ own words to describe their work and their creative processes. The exhibit is meant to put a face on those who are incarcerated, to spark conversations and stimulate thinking about the lives of imprisoned people and their communities, both inside and outside of prison.
[2] See Fleetwood, Marking Time, esp. pp. xxiii-xiv on including info about why a person is in prison. A series of related public events and discussions appears on the Justice Arts Coalition’s events page.