Please write to info@thejusticeartscoalition.org if you have an event for us to share!
Events can also be found on our Google calendar.
Exhibition: Becoming Free
Opening May 25th, 2019 in Washington, DC
Join us to celebrate the launch of the Justice Arts Coalition at the exhibition’s opening reception.
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Exhibition: Future IDs
Runs through October, 2019 at Alcatraz Island, CA
About Future IDs at Alcatraz
Alcatraz as an iconic venue provides a poignant context for Future IDs at Alcatraz as a yearlong project, exhibition and series of monthly public programs. Installed in the New Industries Building, the exhibition features ID-inspired artworks created by and with individuals who have conviction histories as they conceive and develop a vision for a future self.
Social practice artist Gregory Sale and a team of collaborators have translated criminal justice reform efforts into a visual language to shift thinking about rehabilitation, reentry, and reintegration. Dr. Luis Garcia, Kirn Kim, Sabrina Reid, Jessica Tully, Gregory Sale and many others have designed the project to function as a platform for conversation through performances, workshops, and civic dialogue experiments that are co-curated with community partners.
Future IDs began through a relationship with the Anti-Recidivism Coalition and has grown over four years into a multi-layered initiative involving more than 20 community organizations. This project on Alcatraz runs through October 2019 and is presented in partnership with the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy through the Art in the Parks program. It engages Alcatraz’s layered history as an iconic federal prison, birthplace of the Native American Red Power Movement, national park, and International Site of Conscience.
This project is generously supported by Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Creative Capital Foundation, A Blade of Grass/David Rockefeller Fund, SPArt, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, and individual contributors.
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Exhibition and related events: Redaction
April through May 5th, 2019 in Queens, NY
Throughout their careers, visual artist and filmmaker Titus Kaphar and memoirist, poet, and attorney Reginald Dwayne Betts have used their varied mediums to confront the abuses of the criminal justice system. The Redaction presents more than 30 new prints and a series of public programs that examine the issue of money bail, the condition of the state and federal court system by which those arrested, but unable to afford bail, remain incarcerated even though they have been neither tried nor convicted.
Drawing inspiration and source material from lawsuits filed by the Civil Rights Corps (CRC) on behalf of people incarcerated because of an inability to pay court fines and fees, The Redaction features poetry by Betts in combination with Kaphar’s etched portraits of incarcerated individuals. Betts utilizes the legal strategy of redaction to craft verse out of legal documents, capturing the complicated and pervasive effects of time spent incarcerated. These poems have been screenprinted by Kaphar onto handmade paper using the Redaction font, a new open-source typeface created for the project. Together, Betts’s poems and Kaphar’s printed portraits blend the voices of poet and artist with those of the plaintiffs and prosecutors, reclaiming these lost narratives and drawing attention to some of the many individuals whose lives have been impacted by mass incarceration.
Taking place at MoMA PS1 throughout the month of April, the exhibition marks the first-ever public installation of The Redaction, and seeks to create a platform for a multiplicity of conversations—about art, poetry, and practical legal questions—that can influence outcomes and reflect current conversations around the issue of criminal justice reform.
As part of The Redaction project, Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts collaborated with designers Jeremy Mickel and Forest Young to create a new open-source typeface. The Redaction font features throughout the artist’s collaborative print portfolio and is also available to download as part of the project, in hopes that individuals looking to communicate within the U.S. legal system have recourse to communicate not just through their own distinct language and voice, but also through design as a form of protest.
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Exhibition: Photo Requests from Solitary
April 20th through July 1st, 2019 in Brooklyn, NY
Brooklyn Public Library is pleased to present Photo Requests from Solitary (PRFS), a collaborative project that invites individuals in solitary confinement to request an image of anything at all, real or imagined, and finds artists and volunteers to create them. This exhibition provides a glimpse into the interests, memories, and dreams of people living in extreme isolation.
BPL hosts the first New York exhibition featuring photos and requests from all five states where PRFS has worked. This site-specific installation of requests and photographs created from them will be located in the Grand Lobby and the second floor balcony. Viewers are welcome to fulfill open requests, and will also have the opportunity to learn about the campaign to end long-term solitary confinement in New York’s prisons and jails. Free and open to the public during library hours.
A one-night preview to the exhibition can be seen in the Dweck Auditorium Lobby on March 27th in concert with the event hosting Albert Woodfox on Solitary, in Conversation with Jelani Cobb.
To learn more about the project and view requests, click here.
Photo Requests from Solitary is a project of Solitary Watch, with support from the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation.
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Conference/Festival: Connecting Art & Law for Liberation
April 12th-14th, 2019 at UCLA
Join visionary artists, activists, attorneys, advocates, legal scholars, and community members at UCLA to share innovative, cutting-edge collaborations at the intersection of ART and LAW – aimed at developing and disseminating new strategies to end mass incarceration.
FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
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Call for Submissions: Free Translation
Free translation is a multi-disciplinary exhibition showcasing international works generated from an open call to incarcerated people, ex-convicts, and anyone affected by imprisonment. What you are experiencing is the online version of the Free Translation exhibition, which premiered at MAA-tila in Helsinki from November 15-29, 2018 as part of Prison Outside #2.
The open call for artworks is ongoing and open to all ages. This exhibition makes use of the translation process as we interact and create new artworks in the gallery space and online. Your works on view will encourage the audience to prompt dialogue, inspire thoughts, and creatively activate the space. Your voice is heard and recognized.
Your artistic contribution is very much appreciated. Works can be emailed to info@prisonspace.org or mailed to:
Free Translation
℅ Pixelache
Kaasutehtaankatu 1
00580 Helsinki
Finland
On the online gallery under each picture there is the possibility for you to interpret or comment on that piece. It can be in text, visual, or video format. Your translations and interpretations inspires more thoughts, feelings, and perspectives to be shared and to be sparked.
Prison Outside is centred on the subjects of imprisonment, justice, and the role of the arts in the relationships between people in prisons and people outside. We are interested in perceptions of incarcerated people and ex-convicts in the society, and how we can break the stereotypes and support each other. We focus on artistic practices, be it prisoners’ own initiatives or designed educational projects that promote self-expression, solidarity and communication between people of all walks of life. We also offer a platform for production of artistic projects related to imprisonment, currently with a focus on Finland and Russia.
To keep up to date on Free Translation happenings, please check www.translationisdialogue.org, www.prisonspace.org and https://www.facebook.com/prisonspace.
Prison Outside has been continuously supported by Kone Foundation.
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Conference: Arts in Corrections: Reframing the Landscape of Justice
June 24th-28th in Santa Clara, CA
Presented by California Lawyers for the Arts and the William James Association in collaboration with Santa Clara University and the Justice Arts Coalition.
Participants in this conference will have opportunities to
- Share best practices in program development and curriculum design
- Learn about current research models, including evaluation and documentation
- Develop opportunities to collaborate with justice reform advocates in different states and nationally
- Participate in workshops showcasing exemplary programs for juveniles and adults, as well as restorative justice and re-entry models
- Learn how to build public awareness and enhance programmatic sustainability
- Continue to build the Justice Arts Coalition as a national support organization for artists who teach in correctional institutions and artists coming home
- Participate in art classes in various disciplines taught by master artists
Speakers will include artists, returned citizens, justice advocates, elected leaders, arts administrators, government officials, educators, lawyers and other allied professionals.
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Call for artists: The Confined Arts
The Confined Arts is looking for new and existing artists to collaborate with the “From the Inside Out” project. Selected artists will be given the opportunity to create representational and abstract are that illustrates new narratives about people in prison and people returning home. This includes visual arts, performing arts, poetry, song, and dance. Media artists will be given the opportunity to utilize and experiment with numerous forms of media productions.
*Currently and formerly incarcerated artists will be considered first*
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