Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West

Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West

Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West

Explore the Wende Museum with Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and culture app. This digital/mobile guide takes you behind the scenes with exclusive multimedia perspectives from the artists in Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West

Free to download and free to use, the app was created by Bloomberg Philanthropies to help make the art and offerings of cultural organizations more accessible— not just to those visiting in person, but to people around the world.

Download the app from BloombergConnects.org or by scanning the below QR code and then search for or scroll to the Wende Museum. After you have the app, you can scan the QR codes in this catalog to listen to the audio tour, featuring in-depth interviews and conversations with the artists in this exhibition.

November 11, 2023–September 15, 2024

previous pages: Installation view of Leonid Lamm and Shepard Sherbell (Courtesy of Olga Lamm and Collection Wende Museum)

above: Installation view of Fresno Skateboard Salvage, Lorton Photography Workshop, Kitiona Paepule, and Sandow Birk (Courtesy of Rodney Rodriguez, Karen Ruckman, Kitiona Paepule, and Bill Nichols)

Introduction

While imprisoned in the Soviet Union from 1957 to 1964, sculptor Léonid Nedov clandestinely rendered scenes of prison life onto broken pieces of enamel dishware in haunting detail, until his release thanks to mediation by the famous dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Nedov’s powerful creative expression in the face of terror formed the inspiration for the exhibition Visions of Transcendence

Visions of Transcendence presents artwork created by people who have lost their right of privacy and security by being incarcerated or unhoused. The exhibition pairs art from the Soviet Bloc countries during the Cold War with the contemporary West, reflecting on the parallels and differences between two competing political systems. Irrespective of ideological regimes, the incarcerated and unhoused artists featured in Visions of Transcendence have created and continue to create their own visionary spaces with imaginative artwork, attesting to the healing power of art and creativity.

For artists in countries without a democratic system, such as the communist states during the Cold War, being accused of political or artistic non-conformism was often sufficient to be put away in a prison camp or mental institution. The exhibition presents works by artists who, like Nedov, endured imprisonment by finding escape through a wide variety of styles and creative means. We reflect on the

suppressive Soviet system alongside American society with its exceptionally high rate of incarceration and homelessness, showcasing imprisoned and unhoused artists who express their humanity and their often transforming stories through their art.

The Wende Museum expresses its deep gratitude to the many people and organizations who helped us realize this exhibition. They include all the featured artists as well as the Archive of Modern Conflict, Immigration Detention Archive (Border Criminologies, University of Oxford), Fresno Skateboard Salvage, Future IDs Project, Huma House, Library Street Collective, Los Angeles Poverty Department, the Museum of Chinese in America, The People Concern’s Studio 526, Prison Arts Collective, and Nochlezhka. Special thanks to Edgar Aguilar, Mary Bosworth, Henriëtte Brouwers, Annie Buckley, Alice Corona, Misty Dawn-MacMillan, Nicole Fleetwood, David Franklin, Jane Friedman, Steven Fullwood, Thao Ha, Phung Huynh, Meetra Johansen, Olga Lamm, Daniel Lee, Innesa Levkova-Lamm, John Malpede, Rodney Rodriguez, Ananya Roy, Bidhan Chandra Roy, Karen Ruckman, Leah Rutt, Gregory Sale, Aleksander Smukler, Xenia Solodova, Thomas Szlukovenyi, Nancy NG Tam, Laurence Thrush, Tonya Turner Carroll, and Khadija von Zinnenburg-Carroll.

Léonid Nedov

Léonid Nedov was the son of a metal worker in the Moldovan city of Tiraspol. He wanted to study art but instead was recruited into the Soviet army in 1942 during World War II. After he was discharged in 1945, he tried to make ends meet by forging 50-ruble notes, which he used to buy food and study art. He was caught in 1957 and sentenced to death by firing squad, which was commuted to twenty-five years in prison. He spent three years in the infamous Kolyma gulag in Arkhangelsk but was transferred to the prison in his hometown of Tiraspol. The prison commander recognized Nedov’s artistic talent and granted him full use of the prison studio, where he was assigned with creating communist posters and statues, as well as door knobs in imitation of those in the palace of Versailles. Clandestinely, he also made statuettes, drawings, and enamels based on his experiences in Kolyma and in Tiraspol prison. He reportedly used soldering irons to

make the enamels on metal acquired from pails and washbasins. He hid some of his works in the hollow head of a large Lenin statue he was forced to make.

Nedov had access to the 1962 novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which was published in the magazine Novy Mir (New World). He dedicated one of his small sculptures to Denisovich and was able to smuggle it out of prison with the help of his visiting mother, together with a letter to Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn received the sculpture and the letter and wrote back, ‘Your sculpture is made from the heart and reaches my heart.’ Through the interference of Solzhenitsyn, his lawyer, and two of his influential writer friends, Nedov was released from prison in 1964. They became friends, and Solzhenitsyn wrote about Nedov in the third volume of his The Gulag Archipelago

Hear more about the history of Soviet Gulags and how Leonid Nedov’s artistic talent helped set him free. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 678

opposite, clockwise from top

Léonid Nedov, Prisoners, 1963, mixed media and enamel on metal

Léonid Nedov, Officer Chizhik, ITK-2, Tiraspol, 1963, mixed media and enamel on metal Officer Chiznik is mentioned by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book The Gulag Archipelago

Léonid Nedov, ITK-2, Tiraspol, 1961, mixed media and enamel on metal All courtesy of the Archive of Modern Conflict

Léonid Nedov,

Léonid Nedov, Inmates Breakfast, ITK-2 , 1960, mixed media and enamel on metal

All courtesy of the Archive of Modern Conflict

clockwise from top left

Léonid Nedov, Prisoner in Shower, 1963, mixed media and enamel on metal

Léonid Nedov, Stall, ITK-2, Tiraspol, 1962, mixed media and enamel on metal

Portrait of Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag, 1964, mixed media and enamel on metal

Léonid Nedov, The Violinist, 1963, mixed media and enamel on metal Courtesy of the Archive of Modern Conflict

Leonid Lamm

“On November 30, 1973, my parents filed documents to emigrate from the Soviet Union. It was a time of mass emigration of Jews from the country. On the afternoon of December 18, 1973, police approached Leonid Lamm on the corner of Gorky Street and Mayakovsky Square in Moscow. A scenario experienced by millions of Soviet citizens ensued. Without warning, the policemen began to beat him mercilessly as they dragged him into a police office. There the attack continued unabated until the artist was thrown against a wall, destroying a picture of Felix Dzerzhinsky, first chairman of Cheka, which later became the KGB. Lamm, the troublesome nonconformist artist who had earlier come to the attention of the police because of his public protests against the Soviet state, was arrested for destroying the picture and driven off to Moscow’s Butyrka prison, accused of ‘street hooliganism,’ an all-purpose charge used to incarcerate people who dared to speak out against the Communist Party and its workers’ paradise. His arrest came exactly three weeks after he had applied for an exit visa from the Soviet Union. As soon as my mother, Innesa Levkova-Lamm, was notified of my father’s arrest, she contacted a lawyer who

was my father’s childhood friend. When the attorney arrived at Butyrka prison, he was informed that he could not visit Leonid Lamm because he had been sent to the prison hospital.

From Butyrka prison, Lamm was sent to a labor camp near Rostov-on-Don at the end of February 1976. In July of that year, my mother wrote a letter to the head of the labor camp, requesting a visit with my father as she was concerned about his well being. Before the month was over she was granted a visit. When they met, my father slipped her all of the drawings he had done in prison, and she took them back home to Moscow, at great risk to both of them. All the works that were created during his imprisonment allowed my father to maintain his sanity during such trying times. This is a story of a man who found freedom for himself through art. He got to know the guards and prisoners, he heard their stories and made their portraits. As a result of exhibitions and publications around the world, these works became publicly known, a powerful expression of the totalitarian structures of his time. All together, Leonid Lamm was incarcerated for almost three years.” —Olga Lamm

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

“In Butyrka prison, Leonid Lamm was allowed to go to the exercise yard once a day, where he would look at the Moscow sky, and breathe Moscow air where he spent over forty years of his life. Later, he would say, ‘Having to look at the sky through prison bars felt like a

catastrophe.’ One day he made a watercolor of this exercise yard. In 2016, this watercolor was recreated into this large oil painting. When I asked my father why he chose to do this, he said that he felt that the theme presently remains topical.”

—Olga Lamm

more

Leonid Lamm, Exercise Yard, Butyrka (Homage to Doré and Van Gogh), 1976-2016, oil on canvas

Hear

about Leonid Lamm’s monumental painting of the Butyrka prison camp’s exercise yard and why he decided to continue painting scenes from his incarceration even years after his release. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 602

Leonid Lamm, Illustrations of Notes from House of the Dead

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

“Innesa Levkova-Lamm began writing letters to all publishing houses that worked with my father, who had by then illustrated over 400 books on various subjects, to request letters to be written on behalf of Lamm’s release. Over a dozen publishing houses sent letters to the prosecutor’s office asking for his release due to his valuable effect on Soviet culture and its expansion and evolution. Within a month, my mother was called to the prosecutor’s office where she was told that it makes no sense for them to receive such letters because they consider Leonid Lamm to be a dangerous criminal. When she asked what he was accused of, she got a single reply: ‘You know!’ Innesa Levkova-Lamm was told that if she approaches

any other agencies to vouch for her husband, they would arrest her and take me away, and she would never see me again (I was five years old). This story echoes the one of Fyodor Dostoevsky who also spent a similar amount of time in a labor camp and wrote one of his most famous books, Notes from the House of the Dead, upon his release. In the prison library, my father found Notes from the House of the Dead and was inspired by the similarities of the story to his own experience. Leonid Lamm made his sketches for Dostoevsky’s book while in Butyrka prison. When my father was finally released, he used these drawings to make lithographs on two stones.” —Olga Lamm

Hear more about the characters and themes found in Fyodor Dostovesky’s novel Notes from the Dead House, which inspired Leonid Lamm’s series of lithographs. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 603

At the top of the composition, prisoners tell the story of how one of them attacked the head of the guard with a knife. He was a terrible person and everyone hated him. The arrested person was punished, and afterwards he died in the

hospital. Along the perimeter of the black hole are the hands of the prisoner with a knife, and in the center of the black hole there is a table where inmates were punished with a whip.

Leonid Lamm, The Head of the Guard, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 11/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Leonid Lamm, Prisoner Gasin, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 5/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Prisoner Gasin was drunk and having fun. He paid money to a cellmate who played the violin, and during the performance Gasin repeatedly shouted: “Play, you took the money.” This text is inscribed at the top of the black hole. In addition, we see branded faces of other prisoners with the Cyrillic letters K, A, and T on their cheeks and forehead, denoting their status as convicts. These hallmarks were produced by the authorities and were applied with hot metal.

Leonid Lamm, Prisoner Orloff, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 5/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

When Prisoner Orloff tried to escape from a prison camp, he was severely punished by the guards with a line of soldiers armed with wooden sticks, who took turns whipping him. At the top of the composition, we see the conversation of Muslim cellmates with the younger Alei. In the center, we see his bed next to Dostoevsky’s. In the center of the black hole is the figure of a praying Muslim.

Leonid Lamm, Prisoner Sushilov, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 5/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

This is a story about cellmate Sushilov, who washed and repaired Dostoevsky’s clothes and cooked his own food. The author tried to give him money. Sushilov was very upset by this and said: “So, you think I am doing this only because of the money, but I, I ... eh!” This text is inscribed in two black holes. Sushilov’s hands move as if he were dividing the black hole. This story suggests that— even in prison— positive human relationships are formed.

Leonid Lamm, Compassionate Widow, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 5/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

This story is about a widow who lived near the camp. Some inmates visited her and kept in contact with her for a long period of time. She has become a symbol of kindness and support. This story also mentions a sick and hungry dog.

Leonid Lamm, Prisoner Petrov, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 5/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Prisoner Petrov was a very strong and independent person. He tried several times to escape from the labor camp. However, he was caught and severely punished— but he never gave up and dreamed of running away again. Once, he said to Dostoevsky, “You are such a loser, I feel sorry for you.” This text is inscribed at the top and bottom of the black hole. In the upper part of the composition, hardworking inmates are depicted. In the lower part, we see a Siberian winter landscape near Omsk.

Leonid Lamm, Luchka is a Storyteller, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 11/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Luchka shares the story of the murders he committed, always exclaiming out loud:

“I am the king and I am God here!” This text is inscribed in the center of the black hole.

Leonid Lamm, Bath, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 7/20, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Dostoevsky describes the bathhouse as a place where prisoners enjoyed bathing. However, the scene itself reminded him of Dante’s Hell In the center of the black hole is a small figurine of a praying Jew, Isai Fomich. At that time, he was the only Jew in the camp; all the prisoners hated and bullied him.

Leonid Lamm, Celebration, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 3/20, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

At the top of the composition, inmates receive absolution. Below, they joyfully celebrate. The text in the black hole reads, “Maybe a holiday.”

Leonid Lamm, Theater, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 16/20, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

This story is about the prisoners who organized a theater in a prison camp. They were actors and musicians. They designed their own costumes; male prisoners played both gender roles and dressed accordingly.

Leonid Lamm, Well-Guarded Hospital, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 11/20, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

This story conveys that the only way to get out of this hospital is to die. The shackles from the prisoner can only be removed after the death has been confirmed by the doctor.

Leonid Lamm, Punishment and Treatment, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 5/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Having punished the inmate with a thousand lashes and wooden sticks, the camp authorities took him to the hospital for recovery.

Leonid Lamm, Mentally Ill, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 5/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Prisoners watch a mentally ill inmate’s dance. They laugh and rejoice. The text in the two black holes reads: “What joy!”

Leonid Lamm, Emotional Crime and Punishment for It, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 5/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

One inmate shared with another the story of how he killed his wife and the punishment he received thereafter.

Leonid Lamm, Great Lent, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 5/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

During the celebration of Great Lent, all inmates were escorted to the city near the labor camp to visit the church, wearing a special sign on the back of their prison uniforms.

Leonid Lamm, Prisoners Release the Eagle, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 11/20, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

The prisoners took care of the sick eagle for a long time and fed it. Once the bird got better, he was happily released, while the prisoners exclaimed, “He feels freedom!” The text is placed at the bottom of the black hole.

Leonid Lamm, Anxiety, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 5/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

A group of inmates expressed their concern to the prison camp authorities about poor nutrition and a hard life. The security chief threatened to punish them if they didn’t stop complaining.

Leonid Lamm, Escape, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 5/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Several inmates tried to escape. They were caught red-handed and severely punished. However, the reaction of other prisoners, written at the bottom of a smaller black hole, was very enthusiastic: “But they ran away!”

Leonid Lamm, The Moral Strength of the Polish Martyrs, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 5/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

A group of Polish prisoners tried to stop the ongoing insults and humiliations from the authorities. They were punished with lashes and whips. During the punishment, the Polish mathematics professor did not utter a single word.

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

In the last story, the author is released from the labor camp. He is finally a free person but the black hole is still alive. This black hole

resembles a cross or a flying bird. The text in the last sentence of the Notes reads, “Freedom – New Life.”

Leonid Lamm, Freedom, 1978-1981, lithograph from two stones, edition 5/16, tempera, graphite, and india ink on paper

Leonid Lamm, Prison Drawings from Butyrka Prison

Courtesy of Olga Lamm

“In the middle of summer, my mom asked their lawyer to inquire about my dad’s whereabouts, and see if she can be granted visitation rights. The only person who was granted permission to visit my father was their attorney, who also informed my mother that my dad was back in Butyrka prison. With the help of the lawyer she sent two school notebooks, two pencils, and two ballpoint pens for my dad. During the meeting with his attorney, my father wrote a letter for my mom, all the while expressing his gratitude for all the art supplies, stating that he would try to make some drawings. At the end of summer, the lawyer met with my father again, he handed my dad two new notebooks and new pens and pencils from my mom. My dad slipped him notebooks full of drawings of guards and prisoners from his cell for my mom. After learning that there was a very well-known artist in their prison, the chief of Butyrka, Colonel Podrez, asked my father to make signage with slogans for the entire prison. Leonid Lamm agreed because he knew this would allow him to see the entire prison outside of his cell. However, when he asked for art supplies such as paper, paint, brushes, rulers, etc., they responded, ‘We don’t have anything of this sort here.’ To which my father replied, ‘My wife can get me those supplies.’ The chief

said he would think about it. A few days later my mother wrote a letter to Colonel Podrez asking for a meeting with her and another famous unofficial artist, Ernst Neizvestny. About a week later, my mother received a letter granting her and Neizvestny a meeting with Podrez. Shortly after, my mom and her friend met with Podrez at his office. During the meeting they told him about my father’s achievements as an established and respected illustrator and said they’d be more than happy to deliver supplies. To which the Colonel replied, ‘This is not legally possible.’ When Neizvestny asked him, ‘Then how is he supposed to do the work?’ the Colonel replied they could bring whatever is necessary through a drop-off window (for inmates). A few days later my mom delivered all of the materials on her own. Soon after she heard from their lawyer that my father was very grateful to have received the supplies. After collecting several notebooks with drawings, and watercolors on paper, my mother began showing them to their friends who were artists, writers, musicians, directors, etc.

Everyone was very impressed that he was able to illustrate his life in prison. After receiving such a response, she sent my dad additional supplies.” —Olga Lamm

Bloomberg Lookup Number: 636

Hear the story of how Leonid Lamm’s wife fought the odds, and some prison guards, to provide her husband art supplies while he was incarcerated in Butyrka prison.

Leonid Lamm, Punishment Cell, 1974, Butyrka Prison, colored pencil on paper Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Leonid Lamm, Kukhiev - Briber; Gulkhin - Thief; Timofeyev - Briber, 1975, Butyrka Prison, colored pencil on paper

of Olga Lamm

Leonid Lamm, Prosecutor - Pokhomov; Assistant Prosecutor - Nagaev; Gang Leader - Zhukhov; Embezzler - Karoyan; Hooligan - Volkov, 1975, Butyrka Prison, colored pencil on paper Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Leonid Lamm, Three, Three, Three, 1973, Butyrka Prison, colored pencil on paper Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Courtesy

Leonid Lamm, Kunstkammer (The Search of My Home), 1975, Butyrka Prison, watercolor and ink on paper Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Leonid Lamm, Butyrka - Prison Yard #1, 1974, Butyrka Prison, watercolor and colored pencil on paper Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Leonid Lamm, BUTYRKA Prison - CELL #301, 1975, Butyrka Prison, watercolor on paper Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Leonid Lamm, Assessor - Gooton; JudgeBrizitsky; Assessor - Gooton; - Nikonov, 1975, Butyrka Prison, colored pencil on paper Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Leonid Lamm, Ivan (Murderer), 1973, Butyrka Prison, colored pencil on paper Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Leonid Lamm, Avakhumov Ignat - Smart, Sly, Scammer, 1973, Butyrka Prison, colored pencil on paper Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Leonid Lamm, Nikolai Gulyaev - Punk, Moron, 1973, Butyrka Prison, colored pencil on paper Courtesy of Olga Lamm

Shepard Sherbell

On assignment for the German weekly Der Spiegel, Shepard Sherbell traveled throughout the Soviet Union and post-Soviet republics from 1990 to 1993 photographing people during the Union’s dissolution and the early years of the Russian Federation. Having unrestricted access to subject matter, he showed the lives of mothers, miners, farmers, children, and prisoners during the transition from communism to capitalism. This series of images presents the harsh reality inside youth prisons and labor

camps, depicting boys marching through the snow, boys working in a prison factory making handbrake cables for Lada automobiles, and the relief of after-lunch smoke breaks despite the freezing weather outside. One of the images shows the young prisoners from Yeletz Maximum Security Prison on the prison yard, caged with a metal grate from above, during which time they were not allowed to look up at the sky. They were only allowed one hour a day to exercise in fresh air.

Shepard Sherbell, Labor Camp for Boys, Dimitrovgrad, 1992, gelatin silver print Collection Wende Museum, gift from the Goldman-Sonnenfeldt Family

Shepard Sherbell, Untitled, 1991-1992, gelatin silver print Collection Wende Museum, gift from the Goldman-Sonnenfeldt Family

Shepard Sherbell, Untitled, 1991-1992, gelatin silver print Collection Wende Museum, gift from the Goldman-Sonnenfeldt Family

Shepard Sherbell, Yeletz Maximum Security Prison, 1991, gelatin silver print Collection Wende Museum, gift from the GoldmanSonnenfeldt Family

Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space

Maks Velo, The Prisoner (Self-Portrait), 1990, crayon on paper Collection Wende Museum

Maks Velo

This series of works by Albanian painter Maks Velo reflects on his personal experiences as a political prisoner in communist Albania. In 1978, Velo was sentenced to ten years in a prison camp for “agitation and propaganda” under communist leader Enver Hoxha. Among other things, Velo was accused of contravening the state-sanctioned style of socialist realism by producing artworks inspired by modern artists like Amedeo Modigliani, Georges Braque, and Pablo Picasso. As a result, almost all of Velo’s paintings were destroyed, and his art collections were either stolen or burned. In this unique series, created after his release in 1991, Velo shared, in his own words, “the violence of investigation, and the violence of life in prison.” Tens of thousands of Albanians were imprisoned in forced labor camps during the Cold War period. Examined together, Velo’s drawings offer a harrowing portrayal of persecution and the struggle for justice. The Wende Museum serves as a research repository for the historical witness videos collected by the Albanian Human Rights Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to collecting, filming, and preserving the testimonies of Albanians, like Maks Velo, who were politically imprisoned or interned from 1944-1991 during Albania’s communist regime.

Clockwise from top left

Maks Velo, The Cell, 1991, ink on paper

Maks Velo, The State’s Pressure on People, 1992, ink on paper

Maks Velo, The Dictatorship, 1991, ink on paper

All collection Wende Museum

Jared Owens

“The most prominent symbol in these works is the actual figure of the human being, the shadow figure. And that was sourced from the Brookes slave ship diagram that was used to abolish slavery in the 1800s. So, what I’ve done with it is they were laying down, now they’re standing up, right? But at the same time, in standing them up and giving them dignity, I’m also taking away their identity. And even in trying to do so by making them shadows, some of them have faces, no matter what. They have individuality that can’t be stripped from them. So, I always felt like the symbolism of that is very strong. There’s also the use of soil that I sent home from the prison where I was incarcerated over ten years ago. And I started thinking about conceptual elements to send home that would be symbolic of mass incarceration in the crossroads of the state. I started to pretty much grab whatever I could that was around inside the prison that I thought could be made into an object or

be incorporated into objects once I was back in society. Soil is one of the things that I use all the time in my art. I like it to be present because it comes from a place that I, a.) have no desire to return to, and b.) cannot get any more of that material. So, the material is like gold dust to me because thousands of people have suffered on it, sweat on it, bled on it. A lot of the soil is conceptually rich in the nutrient density of suffering. I want people to see the marginalization visualized in front of them. So, the message would be, What can we do as a society to decrease the amount of that terrible thing? How do we eradicate it? And that’s the age-old question. And I just want to always have that question presented in art. I don’t want to make art just for art’s sake. I think that it should be a recognition of social ills that need addressing. And I think that it has to be present in art all the time. I love pretty pictures too, but I think that art should be thought-provoking.”

—Jared Owens

Hear from the artist, Jared Owens, about the symbolism at play in his Series 111 and the ways in which the number 111 followed him in the lead-up to his incarceration.

Lookup Number: 861-864

clockwise from top left

Jared Owens, #9, Series 111, 2022, mixed media on panel, soil from prison yard F.C.I. Fairton, lino printing

Jared Owens, #6, Series 111, 2022, mixed media on panel, soil from prison yard F.C.I. Fairton, lino printing

Jared Owens, #8, Series 111, 2022, mixed media on panel, soil from prison yard F.C.I. Fairton, lino printing

Jared Owens, #11, Series 111, 2022, mixed media on panel, soil from prison yard F.C.I. Fairton, lino printing

All courtesy of the artist

Marlen Spindler

Spindler’s painting was made while serving fifteen years in a psychiatric institution in the Soviet Union. The inspiration of his work lies in his passion for Russia, its nature, and its orthodox icon paintings and frescoes, illustrated in this painting that includes

the central biblical figure of King Solomon. It contains interesting and unique symbols of human life, magical and mysterious figures and creatures believed to represent matters of the soul.

Marlen Spindler, King Solomon, 1972, watercolor on paper tablecloth Courtesy of Alexander Smukler

Stanislav Molodykh

This unique painting of a Soviet mental asylum depicts a remarkable mixture of people. Some appear mentally or physically ill, while others are merely reading a book or playing the guitar— a possible reference to the fact that under Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev, dissident artists and intellectuals were regularly confined in mental institutions. Stanislav Molodykh was a patient in this asylum; he voluntarily committed himself to overcome his alcohol addiction. He

added a self-portrait as the seated man facing the viewer in the lower left corner. The religious mural in the back indicates that the asylum was housed in a repurposed church building. The black cat in the foreground might be a reference to Mikhail Bulgakov’s famous novel The Master and Margarita, in which the devil, always accompanied by a big black speaking cat, compares the Soviet Union with a mental institution.

Stanislav Molodykh, The Asylum, 1982-1995, oil on canvas Collection Wende Museum

Solomon Gershov

Solomon Gershov’s work was often inspired by Biblical subjects and themes of Jewish festivities. Additionally, many of his works reference dance and music. Both of these elements can be found in this work depicting someone playing a shofar, a ram’s-horn trumpet used in Jewish religious ceremonies. The work was made after Gershov’s release from the

Vorkuta gulag, while he was in Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg). Gershov is known for the improvisational character and spontaneity of his work, in which he draws from the experience of his culture. According to Gershov, the artist should “soar up to the sky and cry out to the whole world about its strangeness and imperfection.”

Solomon Gershov, Shofar, 1983, gouache on paper Courtesy of Alexander Smukler

Mihail Chemiakin

Being forced into a psychiatric institution and then exiled from the Soviet Union in 1971, Mihail Chemiakin is known for his nonconformist, surrealist iconography and use of color and space, which are evident in this portrait of Russian tsar Peter the Great. In 1967, Chemiakin founded the St. Petersburg Group, which

became one of the most well-known nonconformist art communities in the Soviet Union. Chemiakin and his group would develop “Metaphysical Synthetism,” a manifesto dedicated to creating new forms of icon painting based in religion, making his work unacceptable to Soviet authorities.

Mihail Chemiakin, Peter the Great, 1979, oil on canvas Courtesy of ABA Gallery

Boris Sveshnikov

In 1946, Sveshnikov was sentenced to eight years in Siberian labor camps on charges of anti-Soviet propaganda. Sveshnikov made artwork both during and after his incarceration; this painting dates from after his release. Sveshnikov expresses his experiences in the camp through dream-like surrealism, addressing themes of loneliness, surveillance, and death. In the 1970s, he tended to adopt a color palette of violet and blue tones along with a pointillist

technique, as seen in this work. His artwork is intricate with patterns and suggested forms including bird heads, feathers, shells, and human profiles. Though Sveshnikov experienced harsh treatment in the camps, he considers his work to be personal and apolitical. “What I painted at home I did for myself . . . All of my works are dedicated to the grave.”

—Boris Sveshnikov

Boris Sveshnikov, Faces and Butterflies, 1980, oil on canvas Courtesy of KGallery and Khodorkovsky Family

Lev Kropivnitsky

In 1946, Lev Kropivnitsky was arrested on a charge of belonging to an anti-Soviet terrorist organization and sentenced to ten years in labor camps in Komi and Kazakhstan. He was discharged in 1954 and rehabilitated in 1956. After his release, he started to paint in an abstracted impressionist style, as shown in this painting. Non-figurative painting helped Kropivnitsky in explaining and comprehending his feelings and experiences beyond visual reality.

“Non-figurative painting gave me the oppor tunity to be closer to reality, to explain the essences of things, to comprehend everything important that we can’t perceive with our five senses. I tried and am trying now, on the basis of what we have lived through and experienced, to create a painting form suitable to the spirit of our times and the psychology of our century.”

—Lev Kropivnitsky

Lev Kropivnitsky, Portrait, 1960s, oil on board Courtesy of KGallery and the Khodorkovsky Family

Vladimir Yakovlev

Vladimir Yakovlev, Composition with Flower and Eye, 1983, gouache and watercolor on paper Courtesy of KGallery and the Khodorkovsky Family

Vladimir Yakovlev’s favorite subjects include fish, landscapes, portraits, and flowers. Both his portraits and flowers are often created solely from memory, revealing his understanding of his world, defined by beauty, through symbols of humanity and nature. With compositions informed by German Neo-Expressionism, Yakovlev uses tools of “deformation, the flattening of form, the expansiveness of color, and experimentation of perspective.” These

tools allow his artwork of simple objects to be highly emotive and harmonic. Yakovlev lived in a neuropsychiatric boarding school in Moscow in the final years of his life.

“I can convey everything in my painting: movement, love, shouting. Through color, I try to convey the cry of unharvested wheat. But it is difficult to convey human thought. My painting is not abstract, not realistic, it is decorative. I love beauty.” —Vladimir Yakovlev

Vladimir Yakovlev’s symbolic flowers, often fragile and falling, invoke metaphors of beauty, loneliness, and suffering. These themes ring true to life, especially in his confinement to Soviet psychiatric hospitals from 1984 until his death in 1988. Being nearly blind and living in isolation under the harsh conditions in these psychiatric institutions gave Yakovlev a “firm grasp on the intangible” and a clearer perception of life’s harmony.

“ There must be the energy of life within a painting. It must give a feeling of organization to one’s life, work, a call to order and purity. In color, there should be tenderness, it should convey the dynamics of life, not its emptiness, give something fresh, true, and convey it with a single brush stroke . . . I was told: Your flower is falling. But the life of a flower is within its fall. If not, the flower is dead. Falling is life.”

—Vladimir Yakovlev

Vladimir Yakovlev, Two Flowers, 1980s, gouache on paper

Courtesy of KGallery and Khodorkovsky Family

Gil Batle

Carved Ostrich Eggshells

“My eggs are about prison life meshed with prison memories. The eggs are my journey. I call them the Wanderer. The wanderer is me. I’m looking for a home. I have a house, but I don’t have a home. I’m housed, but I’m still homeless. An egg I finished right before the show is called Common Swift. The common swift is a bird. And this bird spends 90 percent of its life flying from country to country. It can’t land in the water, so it spends most of its life in the air. It sleeps, it mates, it eats in the air. It doesn’t have a home either. It can’t have a home. And so that egg shows the Wanderer passing through prison, passing through the

island, past the island, a beautiful island, and it ends. Well, the eggs don’t end or begin, but on its final stop . . . I carved out a homeless person with the head of a common swift, the bird sitting with the homeless. He’s content. He’s not in a prison cell, but he no longer has to fly anymore because he realizes that his home is here. And I need to realize that, too. It’s not out there, it’s here. So wherever I go, I am also reminded that it’s better than a prison cell. I don’t care where I am. I could be sleeping in a dark alley next to a homeless guy. It’s better than a prison cell. I am free and I am alive.”

—Gil Batle

Bloomberg Lookup Number: 799

Hear from the artist, Gil Batle, about how he reflects on prison memories through carving ostrich eggs.

from left

Gil Batle, Kite Deck, 2017, carved ostrich egg shell

Gil Batle, Refuge, 2019, carved ostrich egg shell

Gil Batle, Time Killer, 2016, carved ostrich egg shell

All courtesy of the artist and Ricco/ Maresca Gallery

Gil Batle, Queens, 2016, carved ostrich egg shell Courtesy of the artist and Ricco/Maresca Gallery

Gil Batle, Prison Weapons

Gil Batle, Crucifix, 2018, ink on paper

Courtesy of the artist and Ricco/Maresca Gallery

“In prison, they have what they call ‘sweeps.’ The guards would pick a random day, and they come in and say, ‘Out. Out of the cell.’ They kick you right out. What they look for is contraband: cigarettes, drugs, whatever. Stuff you’re not supposed to have. One of the things that I thought was really interesting that they look for are crosses. Crucifix crosses. Matter of fact, on a sweep in Donovan State Prison near San Diego, the first sweep was in a dorm setting. We were watching them throwing stuff out of the dorm onto a pile. Whether it be books, razors, pencils anything longer than, I don’t know, four, three inches. One of the things I noticed, when I first got there, were crucifixes. I said, ‘Oh, man, that’s fucked up. Why the

crosses? Why? The guy’s religious. He’s got nothing else left in his life. He’s got religion.’ As we’re sitting there, the guards each take a cross. Some of them are little plastic ones, the rosaries—they don’t mess with those. Some are the bigger ones, the ones they hang up on their walls. Some are handmade, some are given by family members to pray. The guards pile them up into whose bunk they got it from. And then they pick up the crucifix, and they try to pull it apart. Every so often, they are able to pull apart the crucifix and a little dagger comes out. You pull the cross, and it exposes a blade. It’s small, but it can do a lot of damage, especially if you’re holding a guy down and you’re cutting them up.”

—Gil Batle

“The toothpicks are a type of shank, usually made with toothbrushes. They don’t allow the long toothbrushes that we have—the ones we buy at the store. They give you state issues. What the prisoners do is they take the handles and shape them. I’ve seen some shanks where they melt it. So, you get a disposable razor. They give you these in prison. They give it to you with your soap, your toilet paper, your socks, your

underwear, and towel, and whatever. This is one of your state issues. They give you one, and then they mark your name off. And then, every Sunday they come and collect them. So what they do is they ‘click, click, click,’ and they take off the blade and attach it to the toothbrush, and then take bedding and wrap it around. It’s called toothpick.” —Gil

Batle

Gil Batle, Tooth Pick, 2018, ink on paper

Courtesy of the artist and Ricco/Maresca Gallery

Gil Batle, Grinder, 2018, ink on paper Courtesy of the artist and Ricco/Maresca Gallery

“In prison, I learned the trade of tattooing. If you get caught with tattoos in prison, you can serve more time. You’re not allowed to get tattoos in prison because you are state property, so they charge you with damaging state property. If you get caught with a tattoo gun, it’s even more time. So, you have to be discreet on making a tattoo gun or even be in possession of one. The main material to make a tattoo gun is the motor. You need a motor from anything that spins. Back in the ’90s, it was cassettes. Cassette players have a little motor in it. Then, there’s a toothbrush. You take the toothbrush and you melt the neck into an L shape. You rest a motor on it with the spindle and tie that on with either bed sheeting or tape, if you saved enough tape. Then you get a shaft. It’s usually a Bic pen, and you take out the ink cartridge so you have a hollow shaft, and attach it to the spoon or the toothbrush with the motor sitting on the top. The hardest of all the parts to get is a guitar string size E. No other guitar strings are going to work. You bend the string into an L shape. You stick it down the shaft of the Bic pen, which is attached by tape or string to the toothbrush.

And then you take that little L shape, so there’s the L-shaped guitar string on the other end. Down there is the tip that goes into your skin. So you attach that to the sprocket so as it turns, it’ll turn with the sprocket, and the needle will go up and down. And then, you can get wires from the same place you stole the motor from. You can take the two wires and get an ordinary battery. So you just have a battery and it spins. The ink is made from a chess piece. They’ll take the chess piece, the pawn, and they’ll take the lighter and they’ll light it, and then it’ll start to burn and melt. They’ll put it on a desk. They get a paper bag, and they place it on top. They place it inside the burning piece, and they’ll trap the soot, the smoke. They want that black smoke. It’s carbon . . . Rip open the paper bag. They scrape off the soot. It’s now a powder form. Then they’ll take an antibacterial shampoo or lotion, and they mix it into the carbon powder, and that’s your ink. So they just dip the gun into the ink. And you go ahead and draw your pattern. Genius. Deprivation brings out the creativity in any man. It’s unbelievable, the creativity there. Unbelievable.” —Gil

Batle

Gil Batle, Fiberglass Shank, 2018, ink on paper Courtesy of the artist and the Ricco/Maresca Gallery

“So this guy shows me a shank and it’s made out of this weird-looking waxy material. It’s like if you took old candle wax that’s got that weird beige color to it, and whatever you shape out of it, it looks kind of clumpy. He showed it to me and I said, ‘What the fuck is that?’ He says, ‘It’s fiberglass.’ It’s like the hardest steel, you can’t break that stuff. I said, ‘Where the hell did you get the fiberglass from?’ Filtered cigarettes. You take that filter and you peel off the paper. Take that filter and say you got yourself a little tube of fiberglass, right? Take your lighter and melt it. Let it burn. Then, while it’s melting, you throw it on the ground, on the cement, and take your

foot and give it a good twist. It’s melted fiberglass. I stepped on it and twisted it, and you got yourself a blade right there. This can cut through skin very easily. The inmates back in the day used to save their butts and they would melt them on a plate they heat up coffee with. They’d melt it and shape it into a shank. That’s why they banned filtered cigarettes in prison when I was there in the ’90s. But they allowed the non-filtered cigarettes. So you roll them yourself. Can’t stab anyone with a rolled cigarette. But now I hear they’re completely banned.”

—Gil Batle

Gil Batle, Kite Deck

this page, from above left

Gil Batle, T Bull, 2017, graphite on cardboard

Gil Batle, Ace of Clubs, 2017, graphite on cardboard

Gil Batle, 3 Owl/OG (Old Gangster), 2017, graphite on cardboard

clockwise from top left

Gil Batle, 8 Sword Swallower, 2017, graphite on cardboard

Gil Batle, V Nazi/Octopus, 2017, graphite on cardboard

Gil Batle, 5 Eyeball/Barbed Wire, 2017, graphite on cardboard

Gil Batle, A Knight, 2017, graphite on cardboard

All courtesy of the artist and Ricco/Maresca Gallery

Bloomberg Lookup Number: 803-809

Hear from the artist, Gil Batle, about how prisoners use “kite decks” and playing cards to spread messages during lockdown.

Hungarian Prison Objects

Unknown Maker, Prison Playing Cards, 1980, ink and colored pencil on paper Courtesy of the Tamás Urbán Collection and Archive of Modern Conflict

Unknown Maker, Cup-and-Ball Game, 1980, leather, fiber, and wood Courtesy of the Tamás Urbán Collection and Archive of Modern Conflict

Unknown Maker, Makeshift Immersion Heater, 1980, metal

Courtesy of the Tamás Urbán Collection and Archive of Modern Conflict

Unknown Maker, Makeshift Immersion Heater, 1980, metal

Courtesy of the Tamás Urbán Collection and Archive of Modern Conflict

Unknown Maker, Makeshift Immersion Heater, 1980, metal

Courtesy of the Tamás Urbán Collection and Archive of Modern Conflict

Unknown Maker, Cooking Pot, 1980, metal

Courtesy of the Tamás Urbán Collection and Archive of Modern Conflict

Unknown Maker, Sieve Used to Make “Prison Narc”, 1980, metal

Courtesy of the Tamás Urbán Collection and Archive of Modern Conflict

Tamás Urbán

Tamás Urbán graduated from the Photo Journalism department at the Hungarian Press Association’s Journalism School in Budapest as a student of Éva Keleti and Tamás Féner. In 1976 he was the co-founder of the Studio of Young Photographers (FFS), as well as its first Secretary One year earlier he had exhibited his first series of prison photographs at the Aszód Juvenile Detention Center but was not allowed to show the pictures outside the Center. During the 1980s, he visited several prisons in Hungary, practically living among the inmates in order to get to know them better and gain their trust. From 1990, he worked in Hamburg for Stern magazine and other journals before returning

to Hungary in 1992. His exhibition at the Ernst Museum, Budapest, in 1989, entitled Behind Bars, brought him great success. Urbán received the Béla Balázs Award (1985), WHO Grand Prize (1987), and the Lifetime Award of the Hungarian Association of Photographers. Since 2008, with the support of the National Cultural Fund (NKA) and with a Soros Grant, he has been researching the photographic history of the Hungarian police. His works can be found at the Hungarian Museum of Photography, the Historical Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, as well as at the Körmendi – Csák Photography Collection

Hear more about how Tamás Urbán made a name for himself in the Hungarian art world by photographing correctional facilities, and how the Archive of Modern Conflict became one of the leading private collections related to war and social struggle. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 701

Tamás Urbán, Guard, for Farm Labor Convicts, with His Service Scooter, Állampuszta, 1985, gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist and the Archive of Modern Conflict

Tamás Urbán, Yard Work Break, Youth Reeducation Center, 1970-1990, gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist and the Archive of Modern Conflict

Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West

Tamás Urbán, Separation Cell Door as Seen from the Corridor, Tököl, 1985, gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist and the Archive of Modern Conflict

Tamás Urbán, Two Convicts Hanging Out in One of Ten Cells; the Walls are Decorated with Colorful Photos of Women, 1985, gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist and the Archive of Modern Conflict

Tamás Urbán, Convict Performs Reinforcing Exercises Using a Stool, 1985, gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist and the Archive of Modern Conflict

Tamás Urbán, Female Convicts Come from Doing Laundry, Pálhalma, 1988, gelatin silver print

Courtesy of the artist and the Archive of Modern Conflict

Tamás Urbán, Two Convicts Giving a Christmas Cultural Show, 1985, gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist and the Archive of Modern Conflict

Tamás Urbán, Boy Reading in the Wardrobe, 1970-1990, gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist and the Archive of Modern Conflict

Tamás Urbán, A Young Suicidal Convict with a Maimed Arm and Christmas Mascot, Pálhalma, 1988, gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist and the Archive of Modern Conflict

Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West

Tamás Urbán, Sweeping the Floor at the Aszód Juvenile Detention Center, 1975, gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist and the Archive of Modern Conflict

Tamás Urbán, Ball Factory, Márianosztra, 1985, gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist and the Archive of Modern Conflict

Tamás Urbán, Iron Workshop Where Huge Iron Structures and High-Voltage Columns Are Being Constructed by Convicted Prisoners; Appropriately, Breakfast Is Served in an Enclosed Iron Cage in the Workshop, Sándorháza, 1985, gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist and the Archive of Modern Conflict

Obie Weathers

“When I shared this one with my siblings here, some of them said, ‘That’s not how we take bird baths!’ And of course they are right. But I don’t think most of the bathers in art history took baths in the poses they were depicted in. So with this one I’m following along with that tradition. The idealized and posed figure. But, I’m introducing a person of color into a canon of mostly, if not all, white figures. Women, at that. Pure and perfect, not flashing their trauma. And you know, that seems to be a requirement for a Black person to be seen—much in the same way a woman, of any color, needs to be naked to be seen in a museum. Bird baths are simply ways for prisoners to bathe while locked in a cell without access to a shower. A sink, a bit of soap, and maybe a rag is all that’s needed. We here have had to take many of these of late, due to staffing shortages afflicting prisons across the nation. This, at a time when remaining clean is a matter of life and death.

With this painting I could have depicted this figure closer to the reality of what a bird bath looks like for us here, but I question whether it would actually bring anyone closer to this reality. In using an idealized and posed figure, I am keeping the reality the figure represents obscured in the same spirit that prisons work endlessly to keep the reality of the prison within its walls—out of the public’s view. And perhaps the public doesn’t want to see the reality inside

these walls? Or at least not a large enough public to make a significant change in the lives of the millions locked up in the United States. What makes this figure idealized is its externalized trauma. In our struggles for a better life free of unnecessary trauma, Black people have to prove we suffer trauma. We have to have proof of an absent father or an abusive mother. There has to be some sexual abuse and gangs and drugs and alcohol and underfunded schools in our wrecked childhoods. This is how we become worthy. This is our path toward an affirmed humanity, climbing the phrenological ladder. This is not to say that some of us, if not most around me, locked in these cells bird bathing, have not caused serious harm because we have. I know I have. And it’s not excusable, but nor is it intentionally obscuring our humanity.

There’s something else to this painting: It is from the perspective of someone inside the cell, not someone looking in. There is self-reflection happening. And in that self-examination there is something of a cleansing taking place. A healing and a making whole, perhaps, after a reckoning. Also, the figure isn’t focused on the viewer but engrossed within himself. Something deeply spiritual is happening in this dark place. Also something the public isn’t privy to but that takes place more than it is allowed to know. There is a bit of mystery and even hope to this painting.” —Obie Weathers

Hear from the artist, Obie Weathers, about his life and the people with him on Death Row. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 725

Obie Weathers, Bird Bath, 2021, oil pastel, water-mixable oil, watercolor, crayon, industrial paint, charcoal, graphite, colored pencil, prison floor wax, and collage (paper, birchbark, wasp nest, and Cambodian paper currency) on illustration boards

Courtesy of the artist

“This piece has one foot in the past and one in the future as it comes from my work with a class at UC Santa Barbara. This was my first time working with a class with the tablet I was issued in December. I am trying to juxtapose the low technology of the solitary confinement cell with the high tech of a tablet. The criminal legal system is posing as if it’s making sweeping reforms but it’s all undermined by the continued practice of archaic forms of control like solitary confinement and capital punishment. We have to be very skeptical of these so-called reforms and not rest and think of them as an end.

Then there’s this interaction I’m having with the Literatures in Juvenile Justice class via the tablet. The class is a movement toward a future where justice for youth has truly just outcomes. But I’m having this interaction while I’m under a

sentence of death that has been justified in part by my experiences as a youth and my encounters with the criminal legal system during those tender years.

The title comes from Ryan Flaco Rising, who created the Underground Scholars support program at the University of California for system-impacted people to help them with their education goals. Being sentenced to death and held in solitary for two decades is a type of underground existence. And scholarship is one thing I’ve been up to down here and hope to continue to find the support needed to move forward. Imagine if all the money the state was paying to hold me in this cell and potentially execute me went instead toward educating me when we know that education reduces recidivism rates.” —Obie Weathers

Lookup Number: 722

Hear from the artist, Obie Weathers, about teaching UC Santa Barbara students while in solitary confinement. Bloomberg

Obie Weathers, Underground Scholar, 2023, oil, acrylic, colored pencil, graphite, and collage on illustration board

Courtesy of the artist

“This painting begins with a postcard I received featuring a picture of a wood sculpture of Guanyin of the Southern Sea — the Bodhisattva. This sculpture is dated somewhere around the eleventh or twelfth century. The Bodhisattva’s pose, exuding ease, served as the general reference for the pose we find another Black Human subject captured in, within another barren cell. This million-dollar barren cell is just as much the subject of this painting as the colorful, life-filled human we see in the pose of one known as a compassionate helper of others. And yet, the endless millions spent on endless cells like quicksand pits mire millions of bodies with the potential to heal while the cells go on selling us only the illusion of security. If prison cells were the hulls of ships, they would sail us nowhere. A sad fact is that if the United States hasn’t been able to incarcerate crime out of existence, we won’t ever be able to. When I was arrested, the 15th of February in the year 2000, the two millionth person had also entered the carceral system of America. At the time I was but eighteen and couldn’t then imagine the potential within me to write, think, paint — to be loved and to give love. That took time — decades — and much support from others. We might call them Credible Messengers, men who looked like me, talked like me, and shared much in common with me in our backgrounds. Only they had metabolized much of that shared or similar experience and patched up their wounded humanity. And because they had

accomplished this difficult work, they could now pass down to me the blessing of their wisdom-medicine. It wasn’t until I met my friend Ryan Flaco Rising that I learned this language of the Credible Messenger. I’d seen it over the course of my experiences and exchanges with others on death row. I’d seen it in my fellow prisoner Christopher Young when he talked about mentoring youth, when he said in so many words that in order to help others heal, one needs the insight of empathy to help the healer guide their medicine to the precise mark within the other’s heart. Support groups are so powerful because people of similar experience are intimate with the contours of certain catastrophes and can walk another out the craters to a better place. And yet, for some strange reason we don’t widely recognize that people snared in cycles of criminalized behavior can also benefit from the support of those who have clawed their way out of those very same cycles. Not only do we not widely recognize this but we execute the very people — such as Chris Young — who could have provided many practical maps out of these sad cycles for so many. This painting pleas for those who remain: May we invest in the technology of mentorship. May we invest in the humans who can and who want to help heal but who are held in many millions of cells, unable to invest their human capital into those who would make all our lives richer.” —Obie Weathers

Hear from the artist, Obie Weathers, about how he uses his story to guide young people out of dark places. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 723

Obie Weathers, Credible Messenger, 2022, water-mixable oil, oil pastel, watercolor charcoal, graphite, colored pencil, watercolor, charcoal, and collage (paper, US and Cambodian stamps, a leaf, and foil) on boards

Courtesy of the artist

“The title of this one comes from an Audre Lorde quote: ‘Black feminism is not white feminism in blackface.’ I began this one with the idea of expanding what our deities look like. As a practicing Buddhist, albeit in my chaotic fashion, I started this conversation by envisioning the Tibetan Buddhist Goddess, the White Tara, as trans. Maybe I was thinking of Tenzin Mariko? But for certain all the transwomen of color are being murdered in the states, so I went further and considered this ‘white’ Tara as Black. Racially Black, that is, as the White Tara isn’t racially white at all. So I’m messing with our notions around color. But mainly I wanted to consider transwomen of color as holy by using a revered and sacred form.

I’m also thinking of ableism and notions of beauty by depicting her with one arm. I met someone with one arm last year and she absolutely schooled me on how small my thinking still is around beauty. And she did so simply by being visible in my life for a brief period of time. So I’m pushing us on the question of who has the right to be visible and held in a dignified light in our collective presence. Not pressed into huddles in the shadows on the margins of our world.

The Audre Lorde quote makes me think about intersectionality. How diverse groups of people have varying needs based on their historical points of reference. Or are suffering and having their ability to live full lives limited because of social forces that isolate and target them. This is something I can relate to as a Black man sentenced to death in the South.

I’m not trans, nor am I comparing my violent and morally reprehensible acts (that led to my being sentenced to death) twenty-one years ago to being trans. But at forty years old and having done considerable work on myself over the last twenty-one years of incarceration, I can see clearly that the idea that I need to be locked up, or held in solitary, or let alone executed, is one that comes from a culture where the gods don’t look like me. My visage is reviled. My humanity is marketed as less-than. Check the historical records.

I empathize with people who aren’t able to see me as worthy of an opportunity for a fuller life than this solitary cage allows — as I can understand a person’s fear of a trans person of any color or gender. We’ve all been mocked, forced into the shadows or cells and denied a chance to be heard. Or silenced before we developed a voice, like I was when I was sentenced to death as a mentally ill and confused kid. But we are going to have to start thinking about our knee-jerk reactions to people because people are dying when they don’t need to. People are being denied opportunities to flourish in life because of misunderstood processes of being human. For me this plays out in how I’m seen as not being able to learn and grow from my mistakes. Simply by virtue of my being sentenced to death at nineteen this is suggested. It’s a misunderstanding of the process of becoming more humane: in seeing and deep reflection.”

—Obie Weathers

Hear from the artist, Obie Weathers, about queer identity in the hyper-masculine prison environment. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 724

Obie Weathers, Black Tranz Tara Is Not White Tara in Black Face, 2021, water-mixable oil, oil pastel, watercolor, colored pencil, charcoal, crayon, and collage (paper, paper tape, batik, and faux gem) on board

Courtesy of the artist

“The artwork that I share with you is titled Execution Date. What I was doing with this painting was just simply trying to say how an execution date for me is unnecessary, because it’s overboard, it’s like saying that me being held in solitary confinement is not enough, right?

The mushrooms that are in the begging bowl he’s holding, that comes from these ideas that I got from Adrienne Maree Brown; she talks about how you might see one mushroom, but underground there is a vast network that

connects with other mushrooms, right? And I think about those mushrooms in terms of community and connection, even though I’m in this cell, alone. I know that I’m connected with other people. And I know that if I have any chance of life, of surviving, it’s going to be from the help that I get from the community. And I know that my being alive today has only come from my connections with others.”

—Obie Weathers

Obie Weathers, Execution Date, 2022, water-mixable oil, oil pastel, watercolor charcoal, crayon, graphite, colored pencil, and collage (paper and birch bark) on boards Courtesy of the artist

Hear from the artist, Obie Weathers, about the inspiration and references within his work Execution Date. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 721

Courtesy of the artist and Ai Weiwei Studio

Ai Weiwei discusses the spiritual and aesthetic strengths of Obie Weathers’ and Howard Guidry’s work ahead of their inclusion in a group exhibition with other incarcerated artists. Thereafter, Obie talks about what it means to

have his art be seen and appreciated while he remains in solitary confinement, and how important it is that he gets to be perceived as the man he has become rather than the man he was at his arrest.

Obie Weathers and Ai Weiwei, Ai Weiwei and Obie Message – Buddhas on Death Row, 2022, digital film, 7:22 minutes

Hear from the artist, Obie Weathers, about his art and loneliness. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 719

Christopher Young, Obie Weathers, and Howard Guidry, JASIRI, a feature documentary of death row, 2023, digital film and documentary sample, 10:57 minutes Courtesy of the artists and Reaching Out Productions

Christopher Young, Obie Weathers, and Howard Guidry have served a combined fifty-three years of solitary confinement in the Polunsky Unit Prison in Texas— ground zero for death row in America. In this self-portrait, the three men reflect on the value of human life as they await their execution date. Without access to educational programs, contact visits, cameras, television, or phone calls, the men devised a clandestine way to make this film. Through a network of independent cameramen, activists, and filmmakers on the outside, Young, Weather, and Guidry were able to bring their messages out of prison and to the screen.

JASIRI is directed from death row at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, a maximum-security prison in Livingston, Texas. It is widely considered to be one of the top-ten worst prisons in the United States, notorious for keeping men on death row in solitary confinement for twenty-three hours a day without access to contact visits, phones, or television. Many men serving a death sentence here have suffered psychotic breaks, attempted, or successfully committed suicide waiting out their appeals process and sentence. In Texas, convicted people spend an average of sixteen years on death row.

The story begins with director Christopher Young, a man in his early thirties from San

Antonio, Texas, who spent thirteen years on death row. Christopher’s story is one of spiritual growth and redemption in the face of systemic oppression. On death row, Christopher joins non-violent protests to bring attention to the inhumane conditions at Polunsky Unit; he learns to cultivate his voice through writing, a tool to reach the outside world; he teaches himself to paint, art therapy to express himself; and he learns the meaning of fatherhood despite his physical distance. Christopher matures, he becomes a leader, and takes on the Swahili name JASIRI, meaning “brave.”

Before Christopher’s life ended, he wrote extensively about this film, and created both a script and blueprint to follow so that his vision could be faithfully accomplished. In this blueprint, Christopher asked his friend and fellow death row inmate Obie Weathers to continue the project.

This film is a bold expression of humanity in the face of ruthless oppression. Every word, every question, every shot, every image comes directly from Christopher, Obie, and Howard as their final testament in the face of a death sentence. JASIRI shows the world that this struggle is bigger than one individual’s story; this is a story of what justice looks like in America, and ultimately a story of the country itself.

Courtesy of the artist and Reaching Out Productions

Credible Messenger is a brief documentary centered on the art and teachings of Obie Weathers, a death row inmate who has been subjected to solitary confinement since the early 2000s. While serving his sentence, Obie began creating art and writing about the carceral system, personal growth, and what he would have needed as a teen to avoid serving

time, eventually partnering with an organization that brings his work to a broader audience. This video interviews both Obie and many of the youths and adults he has positively influenced through his written correspondence and art, emphasizing the power of human connection and the limits of a punitive justice system.

Obie Weathers, Credible Messenger, 2023, digital film, 15:10 minutes

Hear from the artist, Obie Weathers, about how he and Christopher Young utilized film as resistance art and a vessel for transformation. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 720

Huma House

“Huma House, a 501(c)(3)organization located in Los Angeles, California, was established with the knowledge that art exhibitions can serve as a potent activist tool. Their core mission revolves around the belief that art can be a transformative force, providing alternative healing methods that guide nations towards peace and enable youth to tap into their full potential. Initially gaining prominence for their powerful and thought-provoking art exhibitions, Huma House was bolstered by profound community support. These exhibitions not only showcased the talent of artists but also illuminated the pressing issues faced by grassroots movements. With

the sustained support from the community, these exhibitions expanded, and Huma House began spotlighting artists from these movements on an international stage. In addition to their art exhibitions, Huma House runs an art education program in South Central Los Angeles. This program provides local teens with tools and opportunities to express themselves through art.

Co-founded by Meetra Johansen and Tobias Tubbs, Huma House continues its commitment to the community and the transformative power of art in South Central Los Angeles.”

—Meetra Johansen

“Reading through history, some visionary minds seem to have traveled from far in the future to share their discoveries with people of that era. They leave a meaningful, lasting impression long after they’ve moved on from this world, a testament to their genius and renown. Omar Khayyam must be one such time traveler who graced the eleventh century with his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. An intellectual giant, Khayyam dared to write the Rubaiyat, full of daring and subversive secular themes encouraging people to spend the short time they had being happy, drinking wine, and enjoying this life instead of fixating on the afterlife. These themes adorn the frame of my painting, a seven-foot rendition of the miniature I originally created of Khayyam and his Rubaiyat. Festive colors depict the flowing wine and joyous spirits that frequent Khayyam’s poetry, an ode to an intellectual giant.” —Omid Mokri

Hear from the artist, Omid Mokri, share insight into his displayed artworks. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 757-759

Omid Mokri

“There were prison guards that hated me and there were prison guards that loved me. There was one in particular that would come and destroy my cell completely on a regular basis. That’s heartbreaking. I had moments where a cop would put me in isolation, like in a cement closet room, and ransack my cell and steal my paintings. And then other inmates would tell me, ‘Oh yeah, he just took it to his car.’ I was painting at night when everybody was sleeping. I would make this camouflage curtain over the wall that was the color of the wall, and I would drape it over my painting when I couldn’t finish it. Because sometimes I couldn’t finish it overnight and I had to hide it so when the cops would do the count and look through the little window,

they would not notice my bright color drawing or painting on the wall. I would fold the paintings and put them in small manila envelopes with directions to my family how to fix them at home. That’s how I was able to get these artworks out. While I was incarcerated, I was having group shows, which was pretty cool. That was actually a way for me to get my artwork out without it being stolen. Art can be a turning point, like, it can change things like it did for me at the darkest hour of my life. Art is like a light. I wanna say that art is my home. There’s no door, no barrier. It doesn’t have borders, no walls, no bars. This is my habitat where I live. And this haven has kept me alive.” —Omid Mokri

Omid Mokri, Come Fill the Cup (Omar Khayyam), 2005, acrylic and gold on linen Courtesy of the artist and Huma House

“King Midas is my portrayal of my cellmate, not as he appeared to those who made him feel rejected and lost, a casualty of the prison system, but instead as a king, with power and majesty, basking in the light of his full potential. A man with dreams, not just another inmate number. Dignified, not discarded. I made this painting on a canvas of discarded bed sheets, treated with tea. I painstakingly ground up colored pencils into a paste with which I painted, using paintbrushes fashioned out of hair cuttings affixed to plastic spoons.” —Omid Mokri

Omid Mokri, King Midas, 2011, colored pencil, crushed colored pencil paint on prison bed sheet, tea Courtesy of the artist and Huma House

“Women, Life, Freedom! The Empress’s heavy crown symbolizes hope, light, and emancipation. Specially designed for the only Shahbanu of Iran, the crown was modeled after those of the old Sasanian Kings, using pearls, diamonds, emeralds, spinels, and rubies from the Iranian Imperial Treasury. The sunburst motif is front and center, emulating the glory and power of the Persian Empire and referencing the rich history of its people. This crown represents the optimism and boundless possibilities offered by the youth of Iran, and generations yet to come.”

—Omid Mokri

Omid Mokri, Our Crown!, 2023, acrylic on handmade red linen fabric

Courtesy of the artist and Huma House

Kenneth Webb

“Unbending is an insight into a collection of memories. Ideas about tribal violence, community mourning, and public grief are central in this captured notion. I remembered the memorials I’ve witnessed in my lifetime and focused on the core of what I felt, what each experience meant to me.” —Kenneth Webb

Kenneth Webb, Unbending, Chino Men’s Institution, 2023, acrylic on canvas

Courtesy of the artist and Huma House

“Small Garden, Strange Soil is a recognition of the notion of the unlikely. The oddity that finds normality in its own container. Los Angeles street culture is a strange realm, the laws of life differ from the rest of society. Yet through its odd nature arises an ecosystem. A place primed with beauty and decay interwoven.”

—Kenneth Webb

Kenneth Webb, Small Garden, Strange Soil, Chino Men’s Institution, 2022, oil on canvas

Courtesy of the artist and Huma House

Dean Gillispie

“I started making art on February 12, 1991. I was convicted of a crime I had nothing to do with and sentenced to twenty-two to fifty-six years in prison. When I got to the prison, I was fighting like crazy on my case, and that starts to drive you crazy. Just dealing with that every day, all day long. I needed something to take my mind off that, to get out of the madness and chaos of prison life. So, I started working on art. The easiest, most accessible stuff was trash I could do art with. All of my dioramas are made of stuff that I found or created. The first thing I built was a little house out of the little manila envelopes they use for files, but they confiscated that, and I was like, Dang, gone. So, I made another one. They confiscated it again. I worked in the maintenance shop. When I was doing rounds, we went to the warden’s office one day and there were both of my houses on the shelf. And I was like, Oh, okay, I see how this works. We had a little art club, but we were only allowed to use watercolor and pastels and colored pencils. So that’s when I started pushing, well, I’m doing this and what’s wrong with it? It’s all trash and blah, blah, blah. We had a guy who was the person between the institution and us, and he started helping me push and allow me to do the stuff. Once I started building a few things, they saw what it was and they liked the looks of it, and I started being able to do more of it. Whenever I was finished with a project, it had

to leave the institution immediately. When my family came to visit, they could take it out with them. Everything I made came out of my head. I never had anything to look at. I would just think something up and start building it. The art is what kept me sane during my wrongful incarceration. It was the thing through which I left the institution mentally. Every time I was working on a piece of art, I was in the world that I created. That helped me mentally to survive. On December 22, 2011, I was released and deemed innocent and wrongfully imprisoned. After I got home, the art started to take on a life of its own. I did a show at Rutgers and since then, the stuff went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and I found out that’s a pretty big deal after the fact. Anyone can be creative. For me, art was the only outlet I had in prison to still be a human. It was the only way to express myself without anyone saying, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. It’s my art. I can do whatever I want to. I wasn’t creating this to hopefully one day be an artist. I was creating it to escape, to allow my mind to create things that would maybe put a thumb to The Man’s eye. Express yourself. Be creative. Just do it. It’s getting what’s in your head out for people to see. I think it’s one of the greatest personal expressions of oneself to be able to create and do art.” —Dean Gillispie

Hear from the artist, Dean Gillispie, about how they sourced dental plaster to create the bricks for the theater.

Dean Gillispie, Theater, 2005, chipboard, match sticks, popsicle sticks, cigarette foil, various found objects, and bricks made from procured glass

Courtesy of the artist

Kitiona Paepule

“Sometimes people forget that prison is like a web that captures not only those who are incarcerated but also their families and communities.”—Annie Buckley, founder of Prison Arts Collective

“My name is Kit Paepule and I was born on the Island of American Samoa, on May 4, 1967. My grandfather wanted all his grandkids to be educated in the greatest nation in the world, the USA! I grew up in the rough and tough neighborhood of Harbor City Projects, in LA County. At the age of nineteen, two people had burglarized my friend’s home, and when my friend (who knew them) went to try and retrieve his property, they beat him up pretty badly, which landed him in hospital. He called me from the hospital and, without hesitation, I retaliated and ended up in prison, sentenced to life without parole plus life. Twenty-eight years into my incarceration, I painted “Doing Time with Papa” from a pic my granddaughter ‘Sassy Kat’ had sent me. The painting represents all the loved ones of those doing time with you. You are not the only one incarcerated, everyone

who cares and loves you is doing time with you! Art saved me, it actually saved my life. When you’re incarcerated, you’re dealing with a lot of things that men usually don’t talk about, broken relationships, stuff like that. So my wife and I, we’ve been together since junior high school. We’re still together. She’s been with me throughout the whole ordeal. She and the kids/family endured that entire 34 years of incarceration with me! And during my incarceration, or our incarceration, I was faced with that. So I was looking for a hustle, something that if she was to leave would help me be okay. And art became that ‘thing.’ Well, it was an answer to a prayer. I prayed, ‘Lord, show me what would be beneficial, because I don’t want to do anything that would hinder my time.’ I wanted to change. I wanted to right all the wrongs in my life at the time, and I wanted to do whatever I could to take this time and invest it into something that will be productive and eventually set me free, something that was in my heart. So art saved my life. Yes.”

—Kitiona Paepule

Kitiona Paepuele, Doing Time with Papa, 2017, California State Prison, Los Angeles, acrylic and oil on masonite panel Courtesy of the artist

“I started this project ten years into my incarceration from a deep rooted belief the ‘Mana’ (‘Holy Spirit/Life Force’) had placed within the core of my being, but I began doubting that I would ever make it out of prison, so I put it to the side for many years that followed. In 2017, I was transferred back to Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) where I started an art class. I started getting this overwhelming sensation to complete this ‘Painting Myself Free’ while still serving a sentence of LWOP (life without parole) plus life. Not long after

putting the final touches on Painting Myself Free, I received a phone call in PBSP from Governor Brown’s Office that my LWOP sentence was now commuted to life with the possibility of parole!!! When I looked at the date, it was on this very day thirty years prior the crime had occurred. BELIEVING in the things I could not see had provided me the HOPE, which led me back into the arms of FREEDOM! Everyone should paint themselves FREE, and you shall be free indeed.” —Kitiona Paepule

Kitiona Paepule, Painting Myself Free, 2010-2019, Pelican Bay State Prison, acrylic and oil on masonite panel Courtesy of the artist

“‘Go west, young man.’ California has long become symbolic of an American destination of hope, possibility, and the future, from its earliest notions as the physical western limit of the North American continent at the Pacific Ocean, embodied with dubious religious aspirations in its incarnation as the final achievement of Manifest Destiny, through the dreams of instantaneous wealth for all during the Gold Rush, and finally as a contemporary destination for aspiring movie actors and rock stars. In 1999, I began a project, inspired by American landscape painters of the eighteenth century, to visit and paint each of California’s thirtythree state prisons. By heading out on long driving trips, I was able to visit them all in three years. My painting of Pelican Bay depicts one of the state’s maximum security prisons, situated

in the far north, near the Oregon border. I believed that at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the view of the West and of California begs to be updated. California currently has the highest percentage of its population in prison of any other place in the world (626 of every 100,000). This project of mine, painting prisons, is now some twenty years old, so it’s great to revisit it. And thankfully, some of the statistics on California prisons are changing, with a lot of people being released, with the legalization of marijuana and with the governor’s drive to disband Death Row in San Quentin. Prisons are a huge problem and a huge industry in California. They are also largely unseen and forgotten. The project was an attempt to remind us how much incarceration affects our society.” —Sandow Birk

Sandow Birk, Pelican Bay State Prison - Crescent City, CA , 2001, oil and acrylic on canvas

Courtesy of the artist and Bill Nichols

Sandow Birk

Fresno Skateboard Salvage

“I grew up in a rough neighborhood. Skateboarding gave me direction that steered me away from gangs and kept me out of trouble. In 2016, I started a nonprofit called Fresno Skateboard Salvage with the mission of providing high-quality skateboards to kids who couldn’t otherwise afford them. To raise funds, we began collecting used skateboards and giving them to artists to be repurposed as fine art, which were then auctioned off. My primary occupation as a truck driver frequently brought me past a prison in the city of Avenal. I figured there were probably talented incarcerated artists who could help our project. In 2019, I left fifty used skateboard decks at Avenal State Prison and the results far surpassed my expectations. The art was incredible and the

Bloomberg Lookup Number: 798

artists genuinely appreciated the opportunity to do something positive for the community. Since then, we have returned to Avenal State Prison every year and have also brought our project to Corcoran, Chowchilla, and Salinas Valley State Prisons. When I started Fresno Skateboard Salvage, it was my hope that skateboarding would provide something positive for at-risk youth to focus on, steering them away from more destructive activities. Now we have prisoners volunteering to help provide this opportunity to these kids. Prisoners, using their time in incarceration, working to keep kids from making the same mistakes they made.” —Rodney Rodriguez, founder of Fresno

Skateboard Salvage

Hear from Rodney Rodriguez, founder of the nonprofit Fresno Skateboard Salvage, about working with incarcerated artists to provide skateboards to underserved youth in Fresno, California.

“I wanted to inspire other inmates to learn more about celebrated artists. I picked Van Gogh because he was an outcast during his lifetime. I bought my first airbrush in 1968 to paint my plastic models of World War I and World War II planes and tanks; I was twelve. My bike was next. I’ve painted ever since. I’m a U.S. Army veteran, Honorably Discharged U.S. Army Veteran, 9th Regt. Light Airborne Scout, most of my time was as a long range reconnais sance Grunt — ‘Infantry’ and ‘Heavy Anti-Tank Weapons Crewman,’ 11 Bravo and 11 Hotel. I served while Ronald Reagan was president so I was in Central America a lot. Enough said. I’ve earned an Associates of Art and Bachelor of Arts degree in Theology and just have to write my thesis to get my Masters degree. I did this while in prison, which wasn’t easy, but the basic computer class they made me take in here was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Well, let’s see, oh, I go to a parole hearing at the end of this year. I’ve been incarcerated since 1997.”

—Michael D. Griego, from a letter to the Wende Museum, May 25, 2023

Michael D. Griego, Homage to Eccentric Genius – or Where’s my Shaving Cream?, 2021, California Men’s Colony West, old skateboard, acrylic on wood, up to forty coats of floor wax to finish Courtesy of the artist and Fresno Skateboard Salvage

“Growing up I always loved animals and wildlife, but being outside within the prison environment is not really something we have a lot of in here. And so being able to bring wildlife and animals into the prison environment through my artwork is something that I really enjoy doing. I just love the beauty and color of the animals and being able to bring that vibrancy to life through my artwork. I’ve always [worked in] colored pencil. During the pandemic, I was watching Bob Ross and Jerry Ell on PBS and paying attention to their brush strokes and their technique of how they layered the paints. And watching their technique, I was able to buy the materials to start painting myself.”

—Sean O’Brien

Hear from artist Sean O’Brien about his involvement with Fresno Skateboard Salvage and the power of creating art while incarcerated.

Bloomberg Lookup Number: 796-798

Sean O’Brien, Ocean Scene, 2022, Corcoran Penitentiary, old skateboard, acrylic on wood, up to forty coats of floor wax to finish Courtesy of artist and Fresno Skateboard Salvage

“It is very fulfilling to work on the Fresno Skateboard Salvage project and to be able to help the at-risk youth and underprivileged children of the Central Valley to have something positive in their lives, and also bringing that positivity into the prison environment. I love the color and the beauty that I’m able to represent in my artwork. In the prison environment there’s very little of that. It’s a lot of concrete and drab steel, and being able to bring that color and beauty into the prison through my artwork is just inspirational for myself and for my peers in here. And also to bring in the staff as well who can see the beauty that we’re able to create and then to share that with the outside world. I think that’s something that a lot of people don’t realize, how much people in prison want to be able to give back and participate in their community and in society.” —Sean

O’Brien

Sean O’Brien, Frogs, 2022, Corcoran Penitentiary, old skateboard, acrylic on wood, up to forty coats of floor wax to finish Courtesy of artist and Fresno Skateboard Salvage

Lorton Photography Workshop: Photographs from DC Prisons

During the Early Days of Mass Incarceration

“The photographs in this exhibition were made at Lorton Prison and DC Jail as part of the Lorton Photography Workshop, a program offering skills to incarcerated people during the 1980s. Founded by photographer Karen Ruckman and supported by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the workshops were a unique moment in prison arts education. Participants learned camera controls and darkroom techniques, building portfolios that captured the narrative of incarceration. The workshops created a safe space removed from the stressful reality of prison life. The men at Lorton Prison took cameras to venues in the prison school, gym, dorms, and workplaces. The women at DC Jail photographed on the floor where they lived, documenting friendships and personal artifacts. Journalists and fine arts

photographers visited the program to share their craft. Over time, participants took photographs that reflected a highly personal vision. Having incarcerated people tell their stories through photography brought new information to the community. Administrators came to appreciate the value of the arts in prison. Participants formed friendships and came together as a community. The photographs present a more complex story of incarceration. The program reminds us to make space for incarcerated peoples’ humanity, as well as for environments that encourage the arts. They speak to the need for diverse image makers in criminal justice and offer lessons the photography program contains three decades later.” —Karen

Ruckman

“This image is about contrasts. The light coming through the window casts hard shadows on the bed. Soft eyes behind a hard face. I didn’t set up the shot, it just happened. I saw the intensity and calm of the moment. I felt the peace buried deep in the heart, covered by fear and anxiety. The light was hope. Karen Ruckman wanted us to express ourselves through photography, not just take snapshots and catch images that were already beautiful, but really find something that says something about you, what you were feeling, what you were thinking, what you

wanted to say. Karen is the sweetest person in the world but she is also very, very tough. It takes a bit of bravery to come into a prison full of men to teach a photography class, but she didn’t treat us with any kind of special caution. We knew not to mess with Karen because we had her back, she really had it. The incarcerated are people too. I’ve met some of the kindest people I’ve ever met in prison. They really were decent, kind, loving persons who made a bad decision or got caught in a bad decision. Some of them deserve a chance. ”

—Bernard Seaborn

Hear from the photographer, Bernard Seaborn, about the subject of The Gambler and finding peace in the chaos.

Bernard Seaborn, The Gambler, 1985, archival pigment print

Courtesy of the artist and Karen Ruckman

“The group of men participating in the program each year joined a community of image makers, rare in the prison experience. The camera gave them a time-out from the stress of prison life as well as an opportunity to take control of their narrative. Before the program, photography was forbidden. As time went by, it became so much a part of the institution that participants were able to take the cameras to once forbidden places such as the gym and dorms, offering a rare glimpse of prison life.”

—Karen Ruckman

Karen Ruckman, Still Time, 1987, archival pigment print

Courtesy of the artist

“The workshop darkroom was built and maintained by the participants. It had working counters for trays and storage, though water had to be brought in from another part of the building. The former closet provided a safe space where the men developed film and made prints. They discussed darkroom techniques and helped each other improve. Visiting photographers such as Craig Herndon of the Washington Post met with the men, offering support.” —Karen Ruckman

Karen Ruckman, In Lorton’s Darkroom, 1984, archival pigment print Courtesy of the artist

“This photo is of my good friend. She is holding photos of those close to her heart. We all miss and love our families so much. Photographs put smiles on our faces. I have enjoyed the photography class and have helped my teacher in some of the class work she has given us.” —Delores New

Delores New, Close To My Heart, 1988, archival pigment print

Courtesy of the artist and Karen Ruckman

“This is my roommate in our cell taking pictures for our photography class. I want to send pictures to my family so they will remember me. I miss them with all my heart. My favorite pictures are of my closest friends and of all the cards I have received.” —Victoria Tedesco

Victoria Tedesco, In My Room, 1988, archival pigment print

Courtesy of the artist and Karen Ruckman

“Desi visited me every day. I got thirty years and I had decided to turn my situation into an advantage instead of succumbing to the disadvantages. Making portraits of her during her visits helped me stay focused. Everything I do I want to do with excellence. What’s inside my heart makes me the person that I am.”

—Michael Moses El

Michael Moses El, Pinnacle of Love, 1985, archival pigment print

Courtesy of the artist and Karen Ruckman

“Walking to the school to teach, I passed by the prison dorms. Residents became familiar faces as we got to know one another during this weekly routine. The prison community was an extension of the District of Columbia, a community within a community. The program taught skills that could be turned into jobs upon release, having everything to do with what the men put in, not their carceral status.”

—Karen Ruckman

Karen Ruckman, The Fence, 1985, archival pigment print

Courtesy of the artist

“For me, the photography program was an opportunity to rediscover some things about myself. It was a ticket to develop, to grow, to learn something that would be an opportunity for us to have something to do once we got on the other side. We were in an institution walking around with cameras, a complete violation of security. But the managers of the institution allowed us this room to do what we did. Because we did it in a way that they respected. The light in the hallway reminded me of the endless hours spent in the facility. I was driven to a high level of proficiency in the photography program. I felt like if I knew it and was comfortable with it, no matter what kind of environment, I could do it well. Success for me is developing the character that enables you to draw people into a more positive place and do things the right way.”

—Michael Moses El

Michael Moses El, Calvin at Twilight, 1985, archival pigment print

Courtesy of the artist and Karen Ruckman

Hear Michael Moses El share memories and appreciation for the photographed subject of Calvin at Twilight Bloomberg Lookup Number: 639

“In Lorton’s Darkroom tells the story of incarcerated men who come of age in DC’s Lorton Prison during the early days of mass incarceration and their journey of self-discovery. It speaks to the need for diverse image-makers in criminal justice and offers lessons the project contains three decades on.” —Karen Ruckman

Karen Ruckman, In Lorton’s Darkroom, 2018, documentary, 37:35 minutes

Courtesy of PhotoChange LLC

Prison Arts Collective

In 2023, Prison Arts Collective (PAC) celebrates a decade of expanding access to the transformative power of the arts for communities impacted by incarceration. The works by artists participating in Prison Arts Collective classes included here showcase the creativity and voices of artists experiencing the physical and psychic limitations that come with incarceration. These artworks are from various years and institutions since PAC’s emergence. PAC’s model cultivates a safe space for creative practice and includes art history and reflection. Classes include collaborative workshops, integrated arts, and the only comprehensive Arts Facilitator Training and mentoring program for currently incarcerated people in the country. PAC is based on the idea that art is a human right and envisions a

collaborative and inclusive society where everyone has access to the arts to promote wellbeing and empowerment. PAC was founded in 2013 by artist and writer Annie Buckley, who remains the organization’s director and is a professor and Associate Dean at San Diego State University. Since 2013, PAC has brought transformative arts programming to over 6,000 people in fourteen correctional institutions across California and has affiliations with Cal Poly Humboldt; California State University, San Bernardino; Sacramento State University; and University of California, Irvine. PAC is supported by the California Arts Council, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

“PAC teachers get excited when artists like Ezequiel Gonzalez explore new styles, such as abstraction or surrealism, introduced in classes in their own creative practices. This expressive painting depicts an emotional landscape in a way that would be impossible in words.”

—Annie Buckley, founder of Prison Arts Collective

“Separation Anxiety is a piece that comes out of my mind, that comes out of my feelings, that comes out of what I was going through at that time. It was done with the palm of my hands. I didn’t use a paintbrush, I didn’t use a reference. It was just paint on my hands and just creating what was going on inside of me at the time, which was a lot of depression for being incarcerated. I was serving a twenty-threeyear sentence at the time, and I had just started the sentence. It was like, oh my God, there’s a long road ahead. And it was just a heavy burden on me. That painting really helped me get it out of my system.” —Ezequiel

Gonzalez

Hear from the artist, Ezequiel Gonzalez, about the feelings being reflected in Separation Anxiety and the power of art to heal. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 823

Ezequiel Gonzalez, Separation Anxiety, 2017, California Institution for Men, acrylic on canvas Courtesy of the artist and Prison Arts Collective

“This work was created while the artist was incarcerated and participating in the PAC facilitator training program. He explained that he had grown up in a gang lifestyle and learned ‘an eye for an eye,’ but as he got older he got to understand Ghandi’s phrase that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” —Annie Buckley, founder of Prison Arts Collective

J. Quintero, The Change Within, 2018, Avenal State Prison, acrylic on paper Courtesy of Annie Buckley and Prison Arts Collective

“This work was created by a woman participating in PAC workshops at the women’s prison in Chino. These classes tend to focus on art as a healing practice and the creative classroom as a space for relaxation and community. Collage materials are a means for artists with or without experience in visual art to express their truth and perspective.”

—Annie

Buckley, founder of Prison Arts Collective

Unknown Artist, Black Lives Matter, 2016, California Institution for Women, mixed media on cardboard. Courtesy of Prison Arts Collective

“M. Nguyen was part of the art group created by and for people who are incarcerated at the men’s prison in Lancaster. PAC was grateful to collaborate with these artists to bring ideas from art history as well as the general encouragement to use their skills and talents to tell their stories and share their point of view.” —Annie Buckley, founder of Prison Arts Collective

M. Nguyen, My Choice of Weapon, 2018, California State Prison, Los Angeles County, oil on masonite Courtesy of Prison Arts Collective

“Christian Branscombe created this work while part of the peer-led artist group Progressive Art Program (PAP) at the men’s prison in Lancaster. This powerful piece depicts the prison yard when everyone is inside for the count. The institutional buildings and spare landscape are familiar to prisons in California and beyond.”

—Annie Buckley, founder of Prison Arts Collective

“To illustrate the polarized and divisive intentions of incarceration, this piece is disjointed, perspective-driven, and monochrome. The face that is stained and fading becomes a haunted figure in this space. The perspective is from the inside of the cell during count time. More specifically, at night, when the correctional officers wake up prisoners every two hours to ensure all bodies are accounted for, treating those inside the cell as their personal property. This deeply dehumanizing experience becomes normalized—like many other aspects of existing in prison, where those incarcerated are monetized, minimized, and forced to endure the most inhumane standards of living. These policies of punitive segregation are presented under the guise of ‘implementing justice.’ As they are gaslit into accepting their consequences, no matter how resilient one is, this constant degradation slowly dismantles one’s reality.”

—Christian Branscombe

Christian Branscombe, Count Time, 2016, California State Prison, Los Angeles County, acrylic on canvas

Courtesy of the artist and Prison Arts Collective

Nadya Tolokonnikova

Tolokonnikova’s Knife Play works reference socalled “shivs,” the hand-made weapons used by prisoners. Tolokonnikova was imprisoned in a former Siberian gulag as a result of her performance art piece Punk Prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Putin’s regime was denounced by human rights groups across the world for the overly harsh treatment it inflicted upon Tolokonnikova. The artist, who will have to bear a criminal record for the rest of her life, is reclaiming the

identity of a criminal by wearing it as a badge of honor, taking back her agency, and standing up against oppressors.

Tolokonnikova employs skills she learned in prison to create her artworks. She utilizes items a prisoner would have access to while incarcerated to create the shivs, such as toothbrushes, plastic spoons and forks, clothing adornments, etc. She also employs repurposed metal foraged from an abandoned prison.

Nadya Tolokonnikova, White 03, Knife Play, 2023, mixed media

© Nadya Tolokonnikova, courtesy of Turner Carroll Gallery, Santa Fe

clockwise from top left

Nadya Tolokonnikova, White 08, Knife Play, 2023, mixed media

Nadya Tolokonnikova, White 15, Knife Play, 2023, mixed media

Nadya Tolokonnikova, White 22, Knife Play, 2023, mixed media

Nadya Tolokonnikova, White 23, Knife Play, 2023, mixed media

all © Nadya Tolokonnikova, courtesy of Turner Carroll Gallery, Santa Fe

Gary Tyler

Gary Tyler is a multimedia artist who spent 41 years in Louisiana’s Angola Prison for a murder he did not commit. In 1974, when he was just 16 years old, Tyler was riding the bus with other Black students when a mob of white townspeople began attacking the vehicle in response to the state’s desegregation efforts. In the chaos, a 13-year-old white boy named Timothy Weber was shot and killed. While being questioned about the incident, Tyler challenged the police on their blatant racism and in retribution he was immediately arrested, beaten, and charged with the murder. Initially sentenced to death, Tyler’s trial was ruled “fundamentally unfair” and the charges were dropped. But in 1980 another circuit judge would disagree with that reversal and sentence Tyler to 41 years in prison.

While in Angola, Tyler devoted his time to drama and material art. He remembered how his mother, Juanita Tyler, was a prolific seamstress who would make dresses for her family, and his grandmother was a quilter who created elaborate pieces out of cloth fragments and newspapers, so he joined a program that taught inmates to sew. He began selling his quilts to raise funds to help people visit family members that were in the prison’s hospice center, and soon his work would be recognized for its bright abstract designs and recurring motifs. Since his release in 2016, Tyler has continued his artistic practice and produced a body of textile work that reflects on his incarceration and looks forward to a more hopeful future, often expressed through depictions of butterflies. As he said in an interview, “I saw my time in prison as being almost like a cocoon; now that I am free it’s like I’m a butterfly.” Like many of Tyler’s pieces, Rebirth is a meditation on the human ability to confront experiences and systems of injustice and yet emerge hopeful and resilient.

Gary Tyler, Rebirth, 2023, quilting fabric, thread, and batting Jennifer and Dan Gilbert Collection, LLC

Travis Hoffmeister

“Incarceration is an exacerbating continuation of life’s earlier traumas. For example, as a survivor of adolescent drug addiction and homelessness, being subjected to forced labor and generating wealth for the State and its allies while, at the same time, adding little value, if any, to my own life and future stands as a constant reminder that I am destined to live a personally worthless existence. Additionally, as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, being subjected to strip searches (essentially forced nudity) and group showers (even in the juvenile system, at the age of fourteen), only acts to reinforce the incredibly persistent negative core belief that I am helpless in the face of indignations and lack control over my own body. Arrested Resistance is, therefore, not simply the portrait of an American doing hard time, it is the portrait of an American during hard times. Arrested Resistance is the portrait of a man battle-tested by the war waged with and within himself. He is not me, yet he is me.

Currently serving the seventeenth year of a 15-to-life sentence for a murder I tragically committed in 2007, I am a Southern California native who permanently resides at the intersection of Art and Science. I know firsthand the healing power of artistic self-expression: it has helped me experience an identity shift. Simply encouraging me to think differently or teaching me coping skills wasn’t enough. Since I still fundamentally believed I was a flawed and unlovable human being living in a hopeless world (thanks in part to the insidious nature of my environment), the aforementioned skills offered only short-term relief. However, when I began to shift to a more preferred identity (as artist, writer, and creator), I did more than just learn skills to cope with the world around me. Instead, I altered who I believed I was. Understanding the distinction is critical to understanding the struggle for recovery in institutionalized rehabilitation.”

—Travis Hoffmeister

Travis Hoffmeister (AL6650), Arrested Resistance, n.d., acrylic on masonite with wood frame and bars Courtesy of the artist and Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy

The Future IDs Project

The Future IDs Project expresses the collective power of rescripting identity, artistic representation, and narrative during and after incarceration. Justice-involved individuals returning to society face almost insurmountable challenges: pervasive stigmatization, families and communities hard-pressed to welcome them home, and the daunting task of finding work and a place to live.

For close to ten years a committed group of artists, allies, and individuals with conviction histories have worked in various contexts to translate criminal justice reform efforts into an artistic language capable of evolving public opinion about reentry into society after incarceration. Led by artist Gregory Sale with core-project collaborators Dr. Luis Garcia, Kirn Kim, Sabrina Reid, and Jessica Tully, their collective work came to fruition as Future IDs at Alcatraz (2018 – 19), a yearlong, socially

engaged art project at the iconic prisonturned-national park in San Francisco Bay.

Future IDs at Alcatraz consisted of two interrelated artistic gestures—an art exhibition and a community program series. With fortyfive, mural-sized self-portraits made by justice-involved individuals, the exhibition served as a conceptual frame and container for an ongoing series of fifty community programs. The series was co-designed with more than twenty partner organizations, the National Park Service, and Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. Together, the exhibition and the programmatic series created an evolving civic space for stories of trauma, transformation, and resilience. As a symbolic gesture, Future IDs at Alcatraz engaged the layered history of America’s most infamous prison to host critical, civic deliberations.

The Future IDs Project at The Wende Museum

Involving individuals with conviction histories in its inception, development, and presentation, the Future IDs Project promotes selfdetermination and models strategies for centering those most negatively impacted by social systems. The project softens conventional boundaries between artist, participant, and audience, allowing for mutual learning and identification to undo the social othering and cultural biases that often stigmatize individuals and communities.

This showing at the Wende Museum presents three aspects of the Future IDs Project: twelve ID-inspired artworks selected from the IDs exhibited on Alcatraz, two short digital films, and a public program. Featured artist-participants include Lumumba Edwards,

Bruce Fowler, Michael Griego, Lily Gonzalez, Kirn Kim, Cirese LaBerge-Bader, Phillip Lester, Felix Lex Miranda, Juan Sanchez, Cuong Tran, William Wang, and John Winkleman.

The digital films are Reimagining Reentry on Alcatraz, created with A Blade of Grass and Rava Films, and Future IDs at Alcatraz, created with the Kenneth Rainin Foundation and filmmaker Jamie DeWolf. The public program led by Dr. Luis Garcia, Emiliano Lopez, and Gregory Sale is an interactive activity based on work done by members of the Future IDs Art & Justice Leadership Cohort (2020-present). The Cohort cultivates justice-involved leaders and allies, exploring how socially engaged art practice can support and further the members’ effectiveness as catalysts of social change.

“1, 2, 3. I do that every morning. It represents the past, the present, and the future. I came to prison when I was nineteen years old, and got out when I was sixty. To have a job, to pay rent, to get up and fix your own meals every day— this is freedom. I’ve spoken in front of California prison folks, on KPAL radio, KPFA radio, in high schools and churches, to try my best to heal the community through them understanding where I came from; to try to stop that violence within the community by letting them know the consequences of going to prison. I’m just trying my best to save a life. And I assured the guys behind those prison walls that I know that’s what they want to do, too. They want to get out and give back to the community. And they know that I’m going to make amends for the rest of my life for a crime I committed. I already know that. That’s guaranteed. And I’m doing just that.” —Lumumba

Edwards

Lumumba Edwards, Future IDs at Alcatraz, 2018-19, ink on vinyl Courtesy of the artist and Future IDs Project

“As a child I was always drawn to the sea; it scared me but at the same time I loved it. Our family spent a lot of time together at the beach in Southern California and Mexico. After they died when I was young, I moved to the beach.

I have had the happiest, scariest, and most life changing events occur while I was out on it. I feel the closest to my family when I’m there and I long and pray to go back every day of my life.

Future IDs differs from other projects I’ve done in that it made me really think about a life after prison in which you can lose sight of being behind these walls. I’m now more aware of what I want and can better focus on that goal.

Preparing for the parole board starts with discovering the traumas in my life that led me to believe the choices I was making were alright. By addressing the ‘root causes’ of my disconnect with society, facing all the negative things I chose to do such as addiction, criminal thinking,

and violence, educating myself in all these issues, gaining tools, having a good strategy, back up plans and a strong support group— to never fall back into that antisocial lifestyle. In short, preparing for board is facing my character defects, becoming a better person, having remorse for everyone I’ve hurt and making amends. Since being in my art class for seven years now, I get to socialize with inmates I would otherwise never talk to, teaching them, learning from them, and gaining new friends. I get to assist the teachers in their tasks, meet and greet all of the many visitors we have, and most of all, donate my artwork to wonderful causes, which allows me to make amends. I have become a much more humble, honest, supportive, trusting, tolerant, and caring person, which builds my self-esteem. Working as an artist definitely helps prepare me for board and most importantly, for life.”

—Bruce Fowler

Bruce Fowler, Future IDs at Alcatraz, 2018-19, ink on vinyl Courtesy of the artist and Future IDs Project

“All Native Americans believe themselves to be Human Beings. Almost all refer to themselves as Human Beings in their Native tongues. The indigenous people of America understood fully all the attributes of our species. These words implied good and bad, I do too. I’m not a redskin because I don’t play football in the Commonwealth of Virginia, or Washington D.C. I’m not an Indian because I am not from India or Asia. I’m not an injun because I can spell engine, and I am not a machine, or mechanical mechanism that converts energy into motion or mechanical force. I am not a savage because I can think, read, write, teach, care, and love. I am

a Human Being because my Creator made me so; and He made me in His own image. I wanted people who visit Alcatraz to know and remember this federal land was our land before there was a prison built here. Indigenous people hunted birds and sea lions here to feed their families. They fished in these waters, and they were free because God made them free. After twentytwo years of incarceration in California prisons, I AM still a HUMAN BEING. Because my Creator made me so; and He made me in His own image.”

—Michael D. Griego, Point of Water-Mountain Air

Michael D. Griego, Future IDs at Alcatraz, 2018-19, ink on vinyl Courtesy of the artist and Future IDs Project

“I’m able to thrive because people welcomed me home. Like a rose, you can rise up out of anything with the proper soil, conditions, and care. All of these things go together. After I was released, I completed a bachelor’s degree but couldn’t get a job. So, what I want from my life is not connected to a job title. It’s connected to how I view myself in relation to the world. I’m an abolitionist. Abolition is a long-haul. It asks: What worlds do we imagine, and what are we doing to build those worlds? It means investing in people. Most people are in prison for crimes of poverty. If people had what they needed, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Throwing someone in prison for an addiction doesn’t get to the root

cause. That person is going to come home and still have to navigate that drug problem. Prisons don’t heal us or give us the tools that we need to survive on the outside. If we invest in each other, if we invest in community, if we take care of one another, that gets to the root cause. What we’re talking about is doing deep community work. I have a special connection to everyone involved in Future IDs. We’ve grown as a cohort. We’ve been stakeholders throughout the process. Our common thread is that everyone wants to come home and improve conditions for those who come after us and, along the way, heal ourselves and find our power.” —Lily

Gonzalez

Lily Gonzalez, Future IDs at Alcatraz, 2018-19, ink on vinyl Courtesy of the artist and Future IDs Project

Kirn Kim was sentenced to life as a juvenile and served twenty years. He is the first employee with an incarceration history of the California Endowment, the state’s largest public health foundation. He educates on justice reform, specifically to support Asians/Pacific Islanders. He is the Future IDs core project collaborator.

“Every child is asked, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ For many of us, we lost the opportunity to fulfill that childhood dream. But that doesn’t mean we still don’t have the desire to become something that redefines who we are. When I first took part in the Future IDs workshop, I was struggling in an Asian-American culture in which I felt shamed. Deciding what to draw helped me see that I no longer had to hide. And since creating my Future ID, I have made strides to realize my future ID’s intention, working to open dialogue on cultural shame

within the Asian/Pacific Islander (API) community. As a board member for API-RISE, a Los Angeles-based organization, I currently support the justice-impacted API community through community organizing, dialogue and cultural productions. For a virtual theater showcase with API-RISE and East West Players, I performed a piece about retaining cultural identity through food, focusing on my own Korean heritage by making kimchee in prison. In many presentations and panels about incarceration and reentry, I share my story of being arrested at 16, tried as an adult, and forced to serve time in solitary confinement as a minor. I serve as a core-project collaborator of The Future IDs Project, as well as an active member of the Future IDs Project Art & Justice Leadership Cohort. And I continue to strive to make my future ID my present reality.” —Kirn

Kim

Kirn Kim, Future IDs at Alcatraz, 2018-19, ink on vinyl Courtesy of the artist and Future IDs Project

“A lot of times men get the majority of the attention for having been incarcerated or in prison. Women still seem to be stigmatized by it and feel shamed by society. And that’s a hard place to come from and to overcome for many people. Maybe you saw my ID? The one that says ‘Mom too’ with bright red at the top. My ID reflects what I’ve wanted in my life. I have an opportunity to connect with people through motherhood. It allowed me to authorize myself and to determine how I wanted to be seen and valued. That’s what excites me most. For over five years, our core group of collaborators and

participants have been working on the Future IDs initiative. We’ve learned how to hold space for ourselves, for self-exploration through art making, and particularly, through opportunities like these to present and perform our work at museums and cultural institutions. Building on this process, Gregory Sale and the creative team have supported the Future IDs collaborators in public spaces, where we can claim ourselves on our own terms. We get to claim each other and to let other people claim us too.”

—Cirese LaBerge-Bader

Cirese LaBerge-Bader, Future IDs at Alcatraz, 2018-19, ink on vinyl Courtesy of the artist and Future IDs Project

“For the reentry community, validation is monumental. It makes people feel that they have a stake and are included in a process that is so embraced. So, what we’ve done has not gone unacknowledged. It’s not unusual to ask kids what they want to be when they grow up; but adults, we don’t ask anymore, even though adults have aspirations and are still growing. Being at Alcatraz makes [the Future IDs artists] feel we’ve done something of importance. It’s going somewhere. The most important thing about the Future IDs project that I’ve got to keep emphasizing is that I don’t think it’s just good for individuals who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated. We’re talking about

society as a whole. I do a lot of work in Compton, Watts, South Central LA, communities where people are underserved. A lot of kids are disenfranchised, and some of them have no hope, no idea of what their future looks like. Given the opportunity to be able to paint their own future, for them to see themselves in a direction they want to go in, and have that in front of them every day — I think that sends a message. It puts us on the pathway that we want to be on, as far as a direction, and where we want to see people in the future, giving them that opportunity.”

—Phillip “Rock” Lester

Phillip “Rock” Lester, Future IDs at Alcatraz, 2018-19, ink on vinyl Courtesy of the artist and Future IDs Project

“My ID is a guide, a road map of the parts of me that are moving forward. And I’m smiling real big in my ID. It’s not just a smile, it’s ‘Revolutionary— breaking the cycle with a smile.’ You know, I had a friend who had a 100-yearsto-life sentence. Because of justice reform bills his sentence was reduced to 25-to-life. For a while it looked like he would one day come home, and now it seems the future for him is bleak. It makes me very sad.

I see myself as on ‘active duty’ like in the military for ‘ARC,’ the Anti Recidivism Coalition. When it gets tough and you go into battle, some people go in with hate, with anger. I go in

with love, with kindness. When I’m down, the dark side, that negative energy, doesn’t want me to smile. When I smile in those times I win. I break the cycle. This project empowered me, gave me strength, knowing that I could envision and plan my own future. Not something state issued but something self-determined, something that I am the master of. And I share that with people I meet who are still locked up. It gives them a sense of hope. We sit down and brainstorm about their futures. Some of them realize that there is an opportunity for them to have a tomorrow. To be the one who gets to say, this is my opportunity.” —Felix

Lex Miranda

Felix Lex Miranda, Future IDs at Alcatraz, 2018-19, ink on vinyl Courtesy of the artist and Future IDs Project

“It’s never been easy to see myself in the free world walking around in society due to my life-without-possibility-of-parole sentence. But I have this very special person who I hold dear to my heart and who has been with me from the beginning. She made me believe in myself when I couldn’t and has been my rock through this process. It was with her that I shared this future ID project and with her that I got to dream. I was going through a transition in my recovery and trying to absorb everything like a sponge, from what I was learning in my support groups to what I was learning in Project PAINT. I wanted to make amends, to give back,

because it has helped me to grow as a person and it’s been my cure to my addiction— recovery and art. Since I can remember, I have always been into drawing. I’ve never been good at expressing myself with words, but with drawing, I could say anything. With art everything makes sense. To see myself sharing what I love to do became the idea for my future ID project, art mentor and substance abuse counselor. Now, because of this project I see myself doing that. If it’s in here (in prison) or out there (in the free world). For that I’m grateful. Thank you.”

—Juan Sanchez

Juan Sanchez, Future IDs at Alcatraz, 2018-19, ink on vinyl Courtesy of the artist and Future IDs Projec

“The borders and format mimic a CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) prison ID. Since the theme is ‘future,’ I painted myself as a free person. I identified myself as ‘rehabilitated,’ ‘artist,’ and a ‘member of the human race.’ This is my mockery of how the prison system can dehumanize inmates. Once I step out of the prison gates, I’m ‘supposed’ to be magically

transformed back into a human, relinquishing my savage ways. The background is Vincent van Gogh’s Bedroom at Arles. I chose this because Van Gogh is my favorite artist. My first painting was a replica of his L’Arlésienne. I’ve read his bio and the letters he sent to his brother Theo. Van Gogh was a tortured soul but genuinely good. However, I don’t agree with the whole ear cutting thing.” —Cuong “Mike” Tran

Cuong “Mike” Tran, Future IDs at Alcatraz, 2018-19, ink on vinyl Courtesy of the artist and Future IDs Project

“My painting shows a person’s face split in half, and in the middle of it, it shows that individual’s job and information: he is a space travel agent, and it shows the people he met and the places he has been. My vision for my Future ID is a digital device that has a folded screen. And its function is more than just an ID. This ID device can be used like a digital wallet, a passport to travel, and as a personal computer. All you need is this one device, and you can do anything and go anywhere. I believe that Future IDs should be high tech and in a digital format. We live in

the digital age, and a high tech ID would be convenient for our daily life. I believe that the state of California already has a digital ID program, so you can now have a digital ID in your cell phone. The future is already here. The Future IDs Project was one of the most interesting projects that I have been involved in. I had a lot of fun creating this painting; however, because of the short amount of time given, I did not finish it the way I would have liked.”

—William Wang

William Wang, Future IDs at Alcatraz, 2018-19, ink on vinyl

Courtesy of the artist and Future IDs Project

“My Future ID intentionally has no name or number or exact likeness on it, yet it represents many stories all the same. Maybe I will never be worthy of redemption, forgiveness or grace. Maybe I already am. Either way, I will not let my worst mistake in life define the man I am today. I am so much more than my inmate number and ID. This project was very difficult for me internally. I struggled. How do I envision myself versus the realities of living with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole? I have been incarcerated since 1995 when I was nineteen years old and began serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. Serving a life sentence, I will never be afforded

the opportunity to be reviewed to see if I have found rehabilitation during the decades I have been in prison. My California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Inmate ID damns me daily. K57302. I have often cried out to God, the Universe . . . will I ever be worthy of forgiveness? When is enough, enough? Am I to be forever punished without the hope of redemption? What could this do to a person’s self-worth if this is their norm, their day-to-day experience of the world all of their adult life? Yet now, as a mature, forty-three-year-old man who has worked hard to heal himself, I choose not to allow my worst mistake to define the person I am today.” —John

Winkelman

John Winkelman, Future IDs at Alcatraz, 2018-19, ink on vinyl Courtesy of the artist and Future IDs Project

With a shared belief that cultural problems demand cultural solutions, a committed group of arts and social justice advocates fostered Future IDs at Alcatraz, a year-long exhibition and community program series about justice reform and second chances on Alcatraz island.

Artist Gregory Sale, together with core project collaborators Dr. Luis Garcia, Kirn Kim, Sabrina Reid, Jessica Tully, and many others, worked to translate advocacy and reform efforts into a visual language to reframe the narrative of reentry. These two films featured ID-inspired artworks created by and with individuals with conviction histories as they conceived and developed a vision for a future self. The exhibition also acted as a container for a series of community programs, co-created

with over twenty community partner organizations. Presented in partnership with the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, Future IDs at Alcatraz ran from November 2018 through September 2019. The iconic venue in San Francisco Bay provided a poignant context as the country’s most recognizable ‘prison museum,’ national park, birthplace of the Native American Red Power movement, and International Site of Conscience. Future IDs at Alcatraz centered the reentry community and other system-impacted individuals, amplifying their voices and holding civic space for open dialogue and stories of trauma, transformation, and resilience.

Reimagining Reentry on Alcatraz, 2019, digital film, 9:25 minutes

Courtesy of the Future IDs Project, A Blade of Grass, and Rava Films

Immigration Detention Archive, Border Criminologies, University of Oxford

“The Immigration Detention Archive is a mixed media collection created by Mary Bosworth, Professor of Criminology at the University of Oxford, as part of her ethnographic research inside British Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) from 2012 – 2020. The British immigration detention system is wholly contracted out, meaning that while there is a national web of custodial institutions, they are run, on behalf of the government, by private security companies. The buildings are all either former prisons or have been built to high security prison standards. There is no statutory upper time limit for how long someone may be detained. While in practice most people are held for only a few

weeks, every IRC has someone who has been there for much longer, sometimes for years. The archive offers a glimpse into these secretive and hidden sites. The paintings and drawings cover a wide range of visual topics, from landscapes to flags, portraits, and domestic scenes. The items chosen for this exhibition were selected to bring the men into the exhibition themselves, by representing their faces, and by showing their creativity and forms of resistance in the beaded bracelets. The individuals remain unknown, but, in these items, remind us of the shared humanity and what is at stake in ever hardening border controls.”

—Mary Bosworth, University of Oxford

clockwise from top left

Glatore, Untitled [Portrait with Many Faces], n.d., Campsfield House Immigration Removal Center, graphite, colored pencil, and acrylic on paper Courtesy of the Immigration Detention Archive, Border Criminologies, University of Oxford

Unknown Artist, Untitled [Sisyphus and the Eye], n.d., Campsfield House Immigration Removal Center, graphite on paper Courtesy of the Immigration Detention Archive, Border Criminologies, University of Oxford

Adam, Untitled [Self-Portrait], 2018, Campsfield House Immigration Removal Center, graphite on paper Courtesy of the Immigration Detention Archive, Border Criminologies, University of Oxford

Unknown Artist, Untitled [Portraits], n.d., Campsfield House Immigration Removal Center, pastel on paper Courtesy of the Immigration Detention Archive, Border Criminologies, University of Oxford

Unknown Artist, Cuff (No. 6), n.d., Campsfield House Immigration Removal Center, hand-woven, beaded bracelet with digital print Courtesy of the Immigration Detention Archive, Border Criminologies, University of Oxford

Unknown Artist, Untitled [Bracelet Depicting Time], n.d., Campsfield House Immigration Removal Center, hand-woven, beaded bracelet Courtesy of the Immigration Detention Archive, Border Criminologies, University of Oxford

Learn more about these two bracelets created by men living in Campsfield House Immigration Removal Center in the United Kingdom. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 777-778

Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll

End Smoke is set in the courtyard of Colnbrook Immigration Removal Center, which is just behind London’s largest Heathrow airport, where people are detained indeterminately awaiting deportation from the UK. The stories the detainees told me demanded to be retold publicly but required anonymization. In the montage of material I portray their subjective experience as it was shared also between different people in similar ways. After giving workshops on photography and video making and having permission to use my cameras inside this highly secured prison environment, the management decided that they would censor my material for fear of it representing them in a bad light. This censorship of my video

material led me to create eighty still frames from one take of an anonymous detainee walking in circles smoking a cigarette in the courtyard. I turned these stills into slides and put them on a carousel that also goes in circles, the way the man and time were going indeterminately in circles. The loss of hope and sense of time quickly descended upon most detainees that I spoke to inside these places, where, although the schedule is extremely regulated, any agency to determine the future is not. For the purposes of this exhibition, the slide film has been digitized. It includes layers of material from the archive of immigration detention that I collected during my residency there from 2015 to 2016.” —Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll

Hear artist and historian Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll describe her film, End Smoke Bloomberg Lookup Number: 779

Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, End Smoke, 2023, digital film inspired by original carousel projection, 3:30 minutes

Courtesy of the artist

People of the Golden Venture

In 1993, the Golden Venture ran aground off the coast of New York City. The ship carried approximately 300 passengers who had left their homes in China as early as 1991, hoping for a better life in America. The shipwrecked passengers were taken into custody by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and were soon divided into smaller groups to be sent to prison facilities throughout the country. The largest group of fifty-two refugees was sent to York County Prison in Pennsylvania and held there for over four years under a US policy that allows for indefinite detention for those seeking political asylum. A bail of up to $10,000 in cash was required for temporary release while waiting for asylum hearings, but the federal government appealed any bail releases granted by local judges.

While the US government claimed that the Chinese detainees were economic immigrants, many of the passengers claimed political asylum, citing the one-child policy and policies of sterilization and forced abortion in China. Others cited a range of conflicts with the Chinese government—for attempting to become Christian, for supporting the prodemocracy movement, for transporting or giving money to pro-democracy students on their way to a demonstration, or for leading protests against the one-child policy.

While incarcerated, survivors of the Golden Venture shipwreck fought the frustration and idleness of detention. The refugees created folded-paper and papier-mâché objects as gifts for their supporters, expressing their hopes, dreams, and fears. Working individually and collectively, they created 10,000 intricate works of art. As the years passed, a small cohort of perhaps a dozen artists became specialists. These lead artists specialized in paper folding. While early works were massproduced and demonstrated ornate folding experiments, the later works show both an attention to technical perfection and a more individual, mature artistic voice.

Name withheld, refugee from the Golden Venture, Gazebo with Removable Pagoda Style Top, 1993–1996, folded magazine paper, cardboard, adhesive pigments Courtesy of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) Fly to Freedom Collection

Fly to Freedom tells the story of Chinese refugees who were arrested after journeying to the United States by sea aboard the Golden Venture in 1993. Most of the 286 refugees were deported, released, or relocated to other countries within a year, but 53 remained in various US prisons for four years while awaiting trial. To pass the time, detainees in the York County Prison, Pennsylvania began creating artwork from folded paper and papier-mâché,

developing increasingly elaborate pieces both to express their hopes and struggles and to thank their supporters. Some of these pieces were shown to President Bill Clinton, who shortly thereafter released the detainees in February 1997. This brief documentary, filmed prior to their emancipation, interviews one of the refugees as he demonstrates different paper-folding techniques and talks about his experiences since fleeing China.

Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), Fly to Freedom Exhibition Video, 1996, digital film, 14:17 minutes

Courtesy of Barry Domfield and the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) Fly to Freedom Collection

Nochlezhka

“The interregional charitable public organization Nochlezhka was founded in 1990 in St. Petersburg. Nochlezhka feeds people, helps with documents, work, registration of disabilities, and searching for relatives. It disputes illegal real estate transactions and protects the rights of people without a home and registration. Together with Canon, Nochlezhka, a Russian NGO helping unhoused people, has organized a series of master classes with Yuri Molodkovets and Pavel Volkov, leading photographers from St. Petersburg and Moscow. During these meetings, unhoused people, Nochlezhka’s clients, have learned to take photos, consider the composition, catch the light and the beauty

of the moment. Photography is creativity, and everyone can be creative to express themselves, tell about their pain or joy, share a shot that tells a story. A person who finds themselves on the street is constantly moving around the city, and it‘s a totally different city than the city seen by people who have a place to return to. We have invited the participants of the project to take their cameras and look at the city not as a dangerous, hostile and cold environment, but as a place that can bring inspiration and joy.” —Xenia Solodova, Special Projects Coordinator, Charitable Organization Nochlezhka

Sergey Saka, Untitled, 2021, St. Petersburg, digital print Courtesy of the artist and Nochlezhka

Evgeny Sayfutdinov, Untitled, 2021, St. Petersburg, digital print Courtesy of the artist and Nochlezhka

both Oleg Sadovnichky, Untitled, 2021, St. Petersburg, digital print Courtesy of the artist and Nochlezhka

The People Concern’s Studio 526

“It’s about the fast pace of San Pedro [Street]. If you look at it, a lot of the figures are very blurry and obscure. Kind of like you see them and don’t really see them. It was what I was seeing outside. There’s so much going on, you know, so that’s what that painting looks like. It’s very blurry and so fast because, right outside there, it’s fast paced. Most of my paintings are dealing with street subjects. People on the street. I put portraits in the street paintings. I wanted to do just street paintings, but portraits are what people are attracted to more. People want to see, you know, one person. They didn’t want to see a whole bunch of people on the street

hanging out. So I had to kind of jumble both of them together, so it’s a melt. All the stuff that I do is collage. It’s whatever scraps I pick up. They go into the painting and you get that energy from stuff that you find. There’s a chi or an energy attached to it, and when you integrate that into the painting, it charges people. You can connect to that. Whatever is found, might be a piece of paper or a card or somebody’s bill or anything, and people will connect to that too. It’s acrylic and paper and magazines. Whatever I can find, I throw it in there.” —Lan

Number:

Hear the artist, Lan, describe the inspiration for the street scene shown in The Window by Studio 526 Bloomberg Lookup

Lan, The Window by Studio 526, 2023, mixed media on wood Courtesy of the artist and The People Concern’s Studio 526

“I was on a bus one day and it was just before COVID and I noticed that a lot of people were wearing masks. I kind of liked the idea of covering your face. I started getting ideas in my head. I spent a lot of time in Boyle Heights. I started walking around and noticing a lot of Virgin Marys everywhere. Especially in liquor stores. I started collecting stuff. I started reading a little bit, articles here and there, about what was going on in the world. And then I heard there was a new infection coming on. So when I started painting, when I started doing this piece itself, my plan was not to make it about COVID specifically, but to make it for the community where I’m at. I started reading about the toilet paper being missed. There was no toilet paper. There was nothing on the shelves in the market. And then I started noticing there was more than that. So I started painting more about what it was behind the curtain and that’s when we had to wear mandatory masks.”

—Peter Villapudua

Peter Villapudua, Our Lady, 2020, acrylic on canvas

Courtesy of the artist and The People Concern’s Studio 526

Hear the artist, Peter Villapudua, describe the inspiration behind Our Lady Bloomberg Lookup Number: 752

“The Choir is a duplication of a piece I made twenty years ago for a friend who is a musician. He teaches music in France. He also has an orchestra, through which he trains many groups in choral and African music. He is a big specialist. So I did the piece for him in one color—sepia— to illustrate the cover of his songbooks for his students. He made a black and white reproduction and used it as a poster for wherever his choral passed by. I wanted to make this composition on henequen fabric. This fabric is the cheapest. You can get it by asking for coffee bags, but with a coffee bag you do not have all the dimensions you need. If you

want big pieces of henequen, you need to buy it in Tela de Henequen, in Yucatan, Mexico. Many people call it burlap. It is not burlap because burlap has very thin threads. Henequen has very big threads. You cannot use traditional gesso. I have a way of keeping it tight with acrylic. It is very patient work with acrylic.”

—Charles Bado

Hear the artist, Charles Bado, speak about the original inspiration for The Choir Bloomberg Lookup Number: 748

Charles Bado, The Choir, 2022, acrylic on henequen fabric

Courtesy of the artist and The People Concern’s Studio 526

“Gary Brown is a dedicated member of Studio 526 since June 2005. His artistic prowess has graced galleries and museums spanning the United States and Europe. Drawing inspiration from the natural wonders around him and the captivating myths of ancient Egypt, Gary employs an array of mediums— graphite, ink, pastel, and acrylics— to craft his art. For Gary, the act of creation is a profound enigma, infusing his life with a sense of enchantment and marvel. Gary’s mastery of color and light lends his creations a dynamic vitality, infusing them with emotion and vigor. Notably, his art

is imbued with a keen sense of humor, adding yet another layer to the rich tapestry of his talent. Beyond his visual artistry, Gary is a gifted jazz musician proficient in saxophone, clarinet, and flute. Having shared the stage with luminaries of the music world, his compositions fuse jazz, funk, and classical elements, mirroring his eclectic artistic approach. Collaborations with jazz legends such as Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter further underscore Gary’s stature in the musical realm.” —Alice Corona, Manager of The People Concern’s Studio 526

Gary Brown, Nefertiti, 2023, acrylic on canvas

Courtesy of the artist and The People Concern’s Studio 526

“My American name is Roy Turrentine. We inherited that name from the Americans, but my family name is Perez. We lived on the Mexican border. We all lived in a little native farming community, called Eloy. It was a real rough town. It was like a tombstone, when I was a kid. It was a very, very challenging place. A lot of racism. I like the coyote in our culture. He’s always been a trickster. Sometimes he puts things in people’s lives that they can’t get rid of so quickly, but they are there to learn from it. It’s not a bad thing. He’s there to teach us by tricking us and making us go down the wrong path sometimes so we can find our way back to

the right one. I’m a Heyoka, which is a sacred clown or a backwards clown. We do things like the coyote. There’s seven masks that we wear as Heyokas. They’re the keeper of ceremonies and maintain the balance, so we carry all the rituals and all the songs. So we can sing the Katu song. The coyote song. When we sing the coyote song, the early settlers think we’re worshiping animals. We’re not. We’re giving thanks to the animals for being in our life. Because, we say, hell is soothing to us in the night, you see. To us, it’s a coyote, right? To us, he’s a lullaby that sings to us in the night. With the crickets.” —“Duck” Roy Turrentine

Hear the artist, “Duck” Roy Turrentine, describe the significance of coyotes and spirituality in his painting Three Coyotes Have a Dream. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 750

“Duck” Roy Turrentine, Three Coyotes Have a Dream, 2017, acrylic on canvas Courtesy of the artist and The People Concern’s Studio 526

“I came up with AME, which stands for Abstract Minimalist Expressionism. It’s influenced by Korean minimalism. The first time I went to an exhibition and saw it, I fell in love with it. My painting is called ‘The Return of the King.’ This king has left home and lost everything: all his possessions, his family, all his friends. But he returns in great victory because he rebuilds what he lost. I lost everything when I became homeless, was out on the streets, and went through a lot of stuff. It took me about four years

Hear from the artist, Rigo Veloso, about how The Return of the King is representative of his own journey of losing everything and starting anew.

Bloomberg Lookup Number: 753

to start painting again. That is what this painting represents: coming back to painting, and trying to do it again but better. I have to do something new because I have to start fresh again after I lost so much. I think that it is through pain and heartbreak and through your mistakes that you really learn. Street life is really bad and it is hard to be a homeless artist, but I think the experience only made me stronger.”

—Rigo Veloso

Rigo Veloso, The Return of the King, 2023, oil on panel

Courtesy of the artist and The People Concern’s Studio 526

“I moved out to California from Ohio, being homeless and searching for something different. I was soul searching. I lived on the streets and it was an interesting God-given mission, but I gained a deeper appreciation for something that I didn’t understand before. I started making art at a young age but fell away from it when I joined the military. I was in Afghanistan at the front lines as an infantry combat soldier. Back in Los Angeles I became homeless, but it was in rehab where I started to find myself again. Reverent Restitution is an oil painting that had so many transformations. It

started out as Archangel Michael defeating Satan in the shape of a dragon. It represents my own journey, passing homelessness and having to rediscover myself in a state of sobriety and civility, finding my place in society, appeasing the gods and defeating the demons. I am a believer in all religions, I try not to put myself into a box but I am very spiritual and I have a deep connection with the forces of the universe. In my art, every form and every brushstroke comes from my story, from my experiences.”

—Tyler Michael Sirovy

Hear from the artist, Tyler Michael Sirovy, about how Reverent Restitution has transformed over time and functions as a self-portrait, speaking to his challenges with homelessness and addiction. Bloomberg

Lookup Number: 754

Tyler Michael Sirovy, Reverent Restitution, 2023, oil on canvas

Courtesy of the artist and The People Concern’s Studio 526

“I was inspired by a class that I go to on mosaics. I saw beautiful colors, this beautiful summer that was going on. Just this year, everything seemed brighter, more beautiful. I was inspired by happiness. My favorite colors to use are pink, yellow, and green. I usually choose the color by the way that I’m feeling. Art is one of the major ways to express how you’re feeling. When you think too much about something, just lose yourself in art, and stay positive. I find peace and inspiration at Studio 526.” —Angel

Correa

Hear the artist, Angel Correa, speak about Summer Green and “losing yourself” in art. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 755

Angel Correa, Summer Green, 2023, mosaic on pottery

Courtesy of the artist and The People Concern’s Studio 526

“This piece is from actual photos that were taken here in Skid Row. At the time, it was when you might get beat up for taking a photo. You weren’t supposed to. And I actually had a friend who lost everything and ended up here. So I was visiting that person. And as I was walking around, we were in different situations, and I was taking photos. They were very powerful. The one with the woman in the blue, she was running from one part of the street to the other, back and forth, just back and forth, you know, going nowhere. But she had these bags and

she kept on running back and forth. People allowed her to do her thing without anybody interfering with her running from one part of the street to the other, one block to the other. They just allowed her to be. I found her really interesting and provocative. I had never seen anything like that, so I was in awe. I was just standing there and I just snapped it as she was going through these movements. And it was really interesting because it was like she allowed me to do it in a time when you couldn’t take photos.”

—Linda Leigh

Linda Leigh, A Day in Skid Row, 2011, acrylic on chipboard from photograph

Courtesy of the artist and The People Concern’s Studio 526

“It is a moment of quiet. The smoker. Smoke signals, help! This piece is of a woman who was by a gate all by herself. She was sitting very quietly and pulled out a cigarette and started to smoke it. I just loved that she was sitting there alone but with a bicycle, so that must have been her mode of transportation. Traveler. She is a traveler. They’re all travelers actually, so I can’t say that she isn’t just one of many. But I love that she was sitting in this quiet, almost meditative state, smoking her cigarette. She

wasn’t near anybody. She was by herself, so it was quiet, like a place of contemplation for her, where she could just be by herself, not bothered by what was going on in the other parts of Downtown in Skid Row, and I just found her intriguing. If you notice, she’s kind of seen in profile, so that’s another one whose face you don’t really see and it doesn’t matter because she’s telling the story just by sitting there. You get an idea of what she’s doing and who she is.”

—Linda Leigh

Number:

Hear the artist, Linda Leigh, share insight into scenes captured in her paintings A Day in Skid Row and Smoke Break Bloomberg Lookup

746-747

Linda Leigh, Smoke Break, 2011, acrylic on chipboard from photograph

Courtesy of the artist and The People Concern’s Studio 526

“I was previously unhoused on Aetna Street, currently housed and working with the Aetna Street Insurgent Research Collective. Los Angeles Municipal Code 41.18 D prohibits the unhoused from sitting, standing, and laying down (otherwise known as sleeping), all of which one must do in order for one’s body to function! For a second, I want you to imagine a time where you were so exhausted you didn’t think you could take another step. When you finally arrived home, you barely made it into bed.

When you awoke, you were sprawled across the bed, still in your work clothes. I’m sure you were thinking Wow, that was a crazy day! Glad that’s over with! Well, lucky you, right? The

unhoused don’t get those same opportunities! When an unhoused person passes out from sleep deprivation, they may be awoken by law enforcement, cuffs slammed onto their wrists, followed by a trip to the City jail for simply allowing their body to function! There’s no ‘ Wow, glad that’s over with!!’ Rather, a consistent fear of falling asleep! Most address these fears with drugs and the thought that nobody cares! 41.18 D is a mass covert operation targeting the unhoused who are forced to sleep in prohibited areas just to obtain services. The housed and unhoused need to sustain a healthy functioning body and life. It’s not hard to see.”

—Jennifer Blake

Jennifer Blake

Jennifer Blake, Where Shall I Rest, 2023, pencil, acrylic paint marker, and Sharpie Courtesy of the artist

Jennifer Blake, A Lahsa Pathway, 2022, recycled grocery packing cardboard from Amazon during Covid-19, acrylic paint marker, and Sharpie Courtesy of the artist

Manuel Compito

Manuel Compito, Round Table, 1996, acrylic on canvas

Courtesy of the artist

“A scene where the cats and dogs, or Bloods and Crips, get together to work out the idea of ‘peace.’ They are deciding ‘What is peace?’ They are bringing all of the problems to the table, in hopes of finding a solution. They are discussing how to stop the violence and keep the peace!” —Manuel Compito

Manuel Compito, Can You See Me?, 2016, acrylic on canvas

Courtesy of the artist

“A depiction of the man on the ground, people walk by him every day. They don’t see him because homeless people are invisible to most people.” —Manuel Compito

Manuel Compito, Franc Foster’s Melting Pot, 2018, acrylic on canvas

Courtesy of the artist

“A symbol of some of the talent that exists in Skid Row. The ‘Melting Pot’ reflects the assortment of people in Skid Row, who come from all different walks of life. It’s the Skid Row ‘gumbo.’ Rest in peace, Franc Foster.”

—Manuel Compito

Manuel Compito, Towne Ave, 1996, acrylic and mixed media collage utilizing found material from Skid Row on canvas

Courtesy of the artist

“A ghost picture from 1996. On Skid Row, if you’ve seen one . . . you’ve pretty much seen everybody. People are invisible on Skid Row. During 1996, Towne Avenue was like a village. This painting reflects the ongoing changes of Towne Avenue, with many people coming and going. These are the ghost images.”

—Manuel Compito

Hear from the artist, Manuel Compito, about the inspiration behind his works. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 792-795

Monica Nouwens

Monica Nouwens has been living and working in Los Angeles since the 1990s. Throughout the decades, she has been documenting the city, the people living there, and their successes and challenges. The photographs in this exhibition come from her series Gary Let Her Have Her Own Life, which explores the stratification of culture and class in Los Angeles and finding the humanity beneath it all. Inspired by the dramatic monologue “You and Whose Army?” from Hilton Als’s White Girls, the series showcases South East Los Angeles at night through cinematic shots and a framing of Nouwens’s relationship within the diverse communities of the city. The photographs of people in this series illustrate Monica Nouwens’s practice of encountering her subjects how and where they are. Using saturated imagery, she focuses on utilizing classical poses in

contemporary spaces. Nouwens also makes sure to build a trusting relationship with her subjects, allowing them to become collaborators. The first people to see the photos are the subjects themselves. Nouwens then turns the images into posters and puts them around the neighborhoods in which she photographs to show the people a piece of themselves and return them to that moment. Though the photographs are personal, Monica Nouwens believes that they do not have to communicate anything and that the meaning is up to the audience. Rather, the works are created for the people they picture.

“ If you look at it and you have questions, those are personal— that’s how you grow and share. I am not here to answer them.”

—Monica Nouwens

Monica Nouwens, Sirius, Gary Let Her Have Her Own Life, 2019, inkjet print Courtesy of the artist

both Monica Nouwens, Bananas, Gary Let Her Have Her Own Life, 2015, inkjet print Courtesy of the artist

Monica Nouwens, Dylan, Gary Let Her Have Her Own Life, 2014, inkjet print

Courtesy of the artist

Monica Nouwens, Matta, Gary Let Her Have Her Own Life, 2015, inkjet print

Courtesy of the artist

Monica Nouwens, Johanna, Gary Let Her Have Her Own Life, 2019, inkjet print Courtesy of the artist

Monica Nouwens, Santee, Gary Let Her Have Her Own Life, 2021, inkjet print Courtesy of the artist

Monica Nouwens, Silver, Gary Let Her Have Her Own Life, 2021, inkjet print

Courtesy of the artist

Monica Nouwens, Portia, Gary Let Her Have Her Own Life, 2013, inkjet print

Courtesy of the artist

Bumdog Torres

This photograph depicts the first day that Torres found the mirror in the trash at Insomnia Cafe. The cafe had been around for approximately thirty years but was then sold and remodeled. When Torres was walking through the alley and saw the mirror in the pile of the cafe’s debris, he took the photo in the heap and then decided to put the mirror on his shopping cart to take photos in other places. After having the mirror on his cart intermittently for a year, he created the photography series “#insomniamirrorseries.”

Bumdog Torres, Insomnia Mirror on Wilshire and Detroit, #insomniamirrorseries, n.d., digital print

Courtesy of the artist

Bumdog Torres took many photos of people holding the Insomnia Cafe mirror in front of Colette Miller’s painting of angel wings on Melrose Avenue; he knew Miller when he lived in downtown Los Angeles before she started making them. This photograph includes Swedish art students whom he met, some of the many international tourists who had come to visit the artwork. When Torres would ask if he could take people’s photos with the mirror, many of them thought he was a beggar due to his shopping cart and ignored him or told him no because they didn’t understand what he was asking. Sometimes he would wait for hours without photographing anyone.

Courtesy of the artist

Courtesy of the artist

Bumdog Torres, Untitled, #insomniamirrorseries, n.d., digital print

Bumdog Torres, Self-Portrait with Swedish Art Students, #insomniamirrorseries, n.d., digital print

This photograph includes a reflection of Torres in the mirror from Insomnia Cafe on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles in a pile of debris. As Torres worked in the cafe, he remembers the mirror from the cafe’s bathroom, where graffiti was encouraged, including on the mirror. Torres heard that Banksy had scribbled something into the mirror, as he had created street art a few blocks away from the cafe.

“ They are completely gutting Insomnia Cafe, where I used to work. This mirror I found among the trash they were throwing out. I remember it very distinctly from their bathroom. God knows how old it is. I’m gonna carry it around with me for as long as I can. I’ll call this the Insomnia Mirror Series.”

—Bumdog Torres

“I wouldn’t have become a photographer if it weren’t for smartphones and social media in this digital age. Being homeless, the thought of buying a camera, then buying film, then shooting stuff and paying money to have the film developed, then paying for prints, then having no place to store them or anyone to show it to: doing all that would have been completely beyond my comprehension. But with the iPhone, I could take it out of my pocket, take a photograph with it, upload it to Facebook, where it’s immediately seen by hundreds of my friends. If it wasn’t that easy I would never have started.”

—Bumdog Torres

Bumdog Torres, Finding the Insomnia Mirror, #insomniamirrorseries, n.d., digital print Courtesy of the artist

Bumdog Torres, Double Self Portrait in UPS Truck Mirror, #findthebumdog, 2018, digital print Courtesy of the artist

“Multicolored mirrors I found on Santa Monica Boulevard were movable. It took me a while to adjust them all and angle them correctly. If you look, you can see parts of my shopping cart.”

—Bumdog Torres

Bumdog Torres, Untitled, #findthebumdog, n.d., digital print Courtesy of the artist

“I was on the Sunset bus headed east, when I decided to get off on Fairfax Boulevard in front of Rite Aid, which used to be a beautiful Art Deco design by Thrifty’s. As I was walking by the parking lot, I saw some random shopping carts. I didn’t like the idea of taking a shopping cart, as I had gotten several tickets for being in possession of them. But I wasn’t going to make it much further with all these bags. I grabbed a small shopping cart and put all my bags in them and started trekking. I thought it would be temporary, just until I found someplace to store my bags. However, with a shopping cart, enough pressure was taken off my hip to the point that I could walk for miles with it, which was incredibly liberating. By the time I found

a place to store my bags, it became easier to keep my blankets and clothes with me on that shopping cart everywhere I went. And I keep acquiring more and more: clothes, blankets, books, water, and food, and various knick knacks I came across. Eventually it became so loaded down and heavy, just pushing it all day long was a serious workout. I became indistinguishable from the shopping cart in front of me, like a hermit crab’s shell or Diogenes’ barrel. Not only did it help me walk but I could go anywhere, stop and eat, or read, or lay down and sleep. The convenience of it outweighed the unwanted attachment.”

Bumdog Torres

Bumdog Torres, The Bumdog in a Basket of Deplorables, #findthebumdog, 2017, digital print Courtesy of the artist

This photograph depicts the unhoused woman Dorothea Jean (DJ) as she holds up a mirror with Torres’ reflection. When Torres takes mirror shots with people in them, they are usually women because “almost all women, even when they are homeless, keep mirrors with them at all times.” —Bumdog Torres

Bumdog Torres, Find The Bumdog with Dorothea Jean (DJ), #findthebumdog, 2019, digital print Courtesy of the artist

“The #findthebumdog series is inspired by photographer Vivian Maier, who took selfportraits that were ordinary but had a beautification that came with a conscious effort. The series is named after the “Where’s Waldo?” concept. Most of the mirrors I found in the alleys and streets were broken and consequently put into the trash. The symbolism of my reflection in these broken, useless, discarded mirrors didn’t escape me.”

—Bumdog Torres

Bumdog Torres, Self-Portrait in Mini Cooper, #findthebumdog, n.d., digital print Courtesy of the artist

“Here’s another shot on the same day I found the Insomnia Cafe mirror. In fact, this was shot in the same alley on the same block. I put the mirror down to shoot something, looked up and saw my shadow on the wall.” —Bumdog Torres

Bumdog Torres, The Bumdog Signal, #findthebumdog, 2018, digital print

Courtesy of the artist

Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West

Anne Bobroff-Hajal

Anne Bobroff-Hajal, Darling Godsonny: Ivan the Terrible Advises the Infant Stalin, 2014-2018, acrylic paint, digital images, and original song lyrics on canvas and board Courtesy of the artist

Hear the artist, Anne Bobroff-Hajal, speak about the parallels of Ivan the Terrible and Joseph Stalin and the prisoners, exiles, and executed between the two powers. Bloomberg Lookup Number: 756

This monumental satirical artwork contains hundreds of colorful three-inch-high portraits of Russians of all ranks, whose stories are narrated in song by animated characters based on real Russian autocrats. Each diminutive Russian is painted using tiny brushes and a magnifying glass at a moment of life-or-death support for his or her own patronage clan, or of vicious assault on another clan. All of these people have specific connections to others in this artwork. Some individuals, depicted as living or as a skeleton, can be traced through several panels, portraying decades or centuries of history, such as Ivan “the Terrible” in sixteenthcentury Panels 1 and 4, and Stalin in twentiethcentury Panels 2 and 5, each consolidating autocratic power by engineering almost identical purges, exiles, and executions, centuries apart

(Panel 3). Under both Ivan and Stalin, these purges, exiles, and executions opened fabulous new ladders for often less gifted survivors to rise beyond their wildest expectations, fueling a new generation’s undying loyalty to the autocrat. The artist’s images and original mordant song lyrics reflect on how all these interwoven relationships have created a profoundly rooted autocratic society that has survived for over 500 years, irrespective of ideological or dynastic changes. Darling Godsonny Stalin portrays the context in which Visions of Transcendence’s Soviet incarcerated and unhoused artists worked. The story sung by Bobroff-Hajal’s animated Ivan the Terrible, as he advises the infant Stalin, explores the centuries-long history of purges, eastward exiles, and GULAG prison camps in Russia and the Soviet Union.

Copyright 2024 © by The Wende Museum of the Cold War

Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West is curated by Joes Segal and Emma Diffley with support from Anna Atkeson, Cecilly Ball, Matthew Jones, Jamie Kwan, and Cheunghsuan Wu.

Photography by Angel Xotlanihua and Dorian Hill

WENDE MUSEUM