Finding a new life and strength after a major trauma is extremely difficult, yet it is not impossible. Art and culture can for example help in this journey towards rebirth and renaissance and can provide a new balance, as proved by an online event currently on at the African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP).
Entitled "Rendering Justice" and launched last October, the exhibition looks at art as a vehicle for activism and as a marker of social change, introducing new contemporary voices, artists who have lived the trauma of the incarceration experience.
The AAMP is located in close proximity to a Federal Detention Center, so the institution keeps firmly in mind the social challenges faced by imprisoned people and their families. While the number of people jailed and imprisoned by Philadelphia's criminal justice system has declined in recent years, the city remains one of the most heavily incarcerated in the nation.
"Rendering Justice" is intended as a way to respond to the challenges and needs of jailed people through the work of contemporary artists proposing new practices around reentry and restorative justice.
There's something for everybody in this event: music and film fans will for example be spellbound by Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter's compelling works. Also known by her hip-hop name, "Isis Tha Saviour", Baxter is a powerful force, creating socially conscious music through an autobiographical lens.
A decade has gone since her release from a Pennsylvania prison, but, while forging a new life for herself, Baxter has kept on analysing through her work the challenges women of color face when they become immersed in the criminal justice system. Baxter has been organising positive projects, teaching creative writing in prison and fighting not just the global pandemic, but also the parallel pandemic of systemic racism.
Other artists included in the event work with mixed materials that have some connections with the fashion and textile industries: Reginald Dwayne Betts, a lawyer and author of the memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (Avery/Penguin, 2009) and of three books of poetry, combines in his works photography and text.
The works included in "Rendering Justice" were made in collaboration with another artist, Titus Kaphar (who often cuts, crumples, shreds, stitches, tars, twists, binds, erases, breaks, tears, and reconfigures the paintings and sculptures he creates) are printed on pulped paper made with prison uniforms and towels.
Self-taught painter and Philadelphia native Russell Craig uses portraiture to explore deeply social and political themes. He survived nearly a decade of incarceration after growing up in the foster care system, and now creates composite portraits on garments, textiles or deconstructed elements of garments including pockects. His portraits assume a sort of three-dimensional quality and invite people to ponder about social injustice and reform.
Contemporary artist and muralist James "Yaya" Hough has got on display in this event 40 watercolors depicting the Feb. 23, 2020, murder of Ahmaud Arbery who was jogging in Glynn County in South Georgia when he was chased, shot, and killed by white vigilantes. The watercolours are a way to slow down the fast and frantic rhythm of the video showing Arbery being shot and confront the horrific dynamics of racism.
Hough, who was convicted of murder at age 17 and spent 27 years in prison, is the first artist-in-residence at the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office and also creates collages examining issues of mass incarceration and US history, one of the most striking is a disquieting image showing a series of Louis Vuitton monogrammed bags and logos forming a hooded human figure praying.
Visual artist Jared Owens expresses his art through a variety of media and materials: his material choices focus on dismantling the idea that that which society discards can never have worth, that's why his paintings also incorporate dirt and gravel from the prison yard.
Michelle Daniel (Jones) uses instead photography to look at identity and, in a project in collaboration with leading scholar Deborah Willis, she looked at how photography can change the narrative of formerly incarcerated people.
Visual artist Michael "OG Law" Ta'Bon developed programs for inmates while he was in prison, finding that music, art, and drama are the most effective ways to break communication barriers. Apart from painting, he has also developed projects such as his movable art centre, a mobile care unit complete with stage on the roof, basketball hoops, T-shirt factory and sound studio, aimed at interacting with the local community.
The African American Museum in Philadelphia describes "Rendering Justice" as "an unflinching depiction of contemporary America".
The online exhibition encourages people to look at themes such as punishment and society in connection with the nation's racist criminal justice apparatus, consider the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black people at the hands of police, and ponder about the roots that American policing and incarceration have in slavery, racial terror and white supremacy, reminding us all about that vast and rich human potential wasted behind bars.
When Michael "OG Law" Ta'Bon introduces himself in one of the videos accompanying the exhibition, he defines himself as a proactivist and artist, but above all a "Renaissance man", a label that redefines the original meaning of the term, indicating not just a present-day individual who has acquired profound knowledge or proficiency in more than one field, but someone who has emerged to a new life after extraordinary pain and has settled onto building community resilience through art.
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