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Kader Kibet was watching President Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021, when a thread of an idea began to form.
He was inspired by Amanda Gorman, who stood on the podium and read her poetry. the hill we climb, It states in part:
“We have learned that calm is not always peace, and ‘justice’ is not always justice…”
That’s when he really started thinking, Kibet told NPR.
“Some of the words in that poem really touched my feelings about our country,” he said.
And the feelings are complicated to say the least.
Kibet, 53, is serving an 80-year prison sentence for assault-related charges.
He is about He was imprisoned in North Carolina for 14 years at the mercy of the U.S. criminal justice system and policies established by U.S. presidents, including Biden.
After the inauguration, Kibet returned to his cell at the Nash Correctional Facility in Nashville, North Carolina, where he had spent the past eight years. He began thinking about “certain improbable ideas,” in the words of Gorman’s poem. “The norms and concepts of ‘right’ do not necessarily mean justice.” That’s what went through his mind.
He wondered what would happen if there was a way to use the voices of incarcerated people to criticize this so-called justice system and challenge the idea of what true justice in America looks like. , he said.
“Most people on the outside don’t know what’s going on here,” Kibet said. “So we accept that this is the way things should be and that the right response to people who cause harm and violence is to just lock them up.”
He’s surrounded by artists at Nash Correctional Facility, and he’s looking at ways to use their talents to advance these questions and ideas, he said.
What started as a flicker in his head in 2021 took years and years to develop, and the thoughts of Justice Arts Coalition supporters like founder and director Wendy Jason and program assistant Janie Ritter. This was achieved through complex coordination with However, this month, Kivett’s idea is to present an exhibition with the following title: Rethinking Prison: The Presidential Portraits ProjectOpened to the public at President Lincoln’s Residence in Washington, DC
The exhibit of 46 artworks and writings was curated by the Committee of Incarcerated Writers and Artists currently living in concentration camps across the United States. The exhibit was coordinated in addition to the Justice Arts Coalition, an organization that supports incarcerated artists. By Lincoln’s Cottage staff.
Admission to the exhibition ranges from $4 to $10 and will run through February 19th. It may be held at a few more venues after that, but that is yet to be confirmed.However, the works will be available for purchase after the current exhibition ends All proceeds go directly to the artists.
The artwork includes various interpretations of portraits of U.S. presidents, including Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, and documents these leaders’ records on criminal justice. revealed under a microscope.
The difficulty of coordinating exhibitions behind the bar
From the moment Kibet contacted the Justice Arts Coalition in early 2021, the wheels started turning, albeit slowly and not without some hurdles. Nevertheless, Ritter tried to ensure that Kivett maintained control over the project.
“It was his idea. I wanted him to make the decision,” she said. “And, of course, many decisions could not be made from within. They had to be facilitated from the outside.”
One of the challenges was communicating with each other about the framework of the project, as Kivett has limited ability to make calls and send emails from his cell phone.And the artists Ritter and Jason worked with People contacted to help with the project are in prisons across the country, and communication relies heavily on mail.
Artists gradually began sending their work to the group’s headquarters in Takoma Park, Maryland.
In order to deliver these works to the Kivett and Nash Incarcerated Artists and Writers Committee, which was selecting the best works for exhibition, Ritter had to send 8.5 x 11 photographs of each work and all copies. there was. Written Submissions.
“At the same time, our email system here was undergoing a transformation from paper to digital, which created a whole new hurdle to overcome,” Kivett said.
Carrie Hawkins, executive director of Lincoln’s Cottage, then sent copies of the floor plans to help the committee choose a location to display each piece.
“It’s a huge space,” Hawkins said. “We were blown away by their ideas for placement and grouping. Literally all our team did was place it on the wall where it was directed.”
Kibet said he couldn’t help but feel disappointed in the process.
But, he said, “this project is proof of what can be achieved if you don’t let discouragement stop your momentum.”
Mr. Kibet hopes that visitors will come to see the exhibit, gain a deeper understanding of the direct effects of mass incarceration, criticize the idea of whether incarceration is the true path to justice, and share their concerns with politicians. I hope that they will return home with the desire to appeal directly to the people of Japan. Make a difference.
“We want everyone to understand that we are all stakeholders, and we want them to understand what their role is in this process. “I hope he leaves the show,” Kivett said.
“Continuing to lock people in cages because of harms committed in our country will not make us safer and will not improve us as a nation,” he said.
He recommends that the money being spent on prisons and jails be redirected to the communities that need it most, rather than continuing to invest it in a genocidal system as it currently is.
President Lincoln’s Cottage provides an inspiring venue
Watercolor paintings, mixed media collages and colored pencil portraits now hang in the Lincoln House, which was the presidential library, dining room and bedroom some 160 years ago.
Some of the pieces are Lincoln’s own.
A mixed media collage created by Robert Spence incorporates photos from Black Lives Matters protests surrounding a portrait of Lincoln. Regarding this work, Spence said, “There is still a lot of hidden (and unhidden) racial prejudice and struggle in America. What would President Lincoln say if he were alive today? Did it happen?'” he wrote. ”
Other works are aimed at Lincoln’s recent successors.
The work reflects how each administration and the policies they signed into law have affected prisoners and contributed to the current state of the U.S. criminal justice system, which incarcerates approximately 2 million people. black Americans, a disproportionate number of whom are black Americans.
Like former President Bill Clinton and his signing of the 1994 crime bill. Critics of the bill say it is responsible for the mass incarceration of Black Americans.
Artist Mike Tran used this incident to create a painting about Clinton.
Tran said, “The Three Strikes Act (crime bill of 1994), which was designed to deter crime, serves to prove how inadequate the “rehabilitation” system is. It’s not about putting them in the room; it’s about helping them.” Understand why they did what they did, who they hurt with their actions, and replace those behaviors with prosocial thoughts and beliefs. That’s it. ”
Tran painted a portrait of President Clinton askew and wrote:
“President Clinton was instrumental in getting this law passed, so I wanted to incorporate these ideas into his portrait. I wanted the symbolism of the piece to be subtle, so I added three small cigars to his collar, I intentionally blurred the American flag, but once you notice it, you can’t look away.”
Not all works portray the president in a seemingly negative light.
In this portrait by Brian Hindson, he reflects on his mixed feelings about President Trump, who signed the First Step Act into law in 2018. This law, among other things, lowered prison sentences for certain nonviolent offenders.
Hindson, who had spent 15 years in federal prison at the time he completed the work, saw “people leaving in droves” after the law was passed, and said that overcrowding in federal prisons ” It is actually being addressed.”
As a result, Mr. Hindson has ambivalent feelings toward Mr. Trump. He divided Trump’s face and painted it in separate parts, each painted a different color.
“Trump was and remains a controversial, divisive, and polarizing figure, but he is the only president who has done anything to benefit all federal prisoners. “Style was my fragmented art. All the elements make up him, all the bad things.” Like all of us, it’s a fragment of us. Every piece makes a whole,” Hindson wrote.
The largest piece in the exhibit is a six-panel installation measuring 72 by 40 inches that hangs in the center of the cottage’s living room wall.
This is an eye-catching portrait with an even more impressive story.
The subject of this piece is obvious: former President Obama. However, his face is distorted and puzzle pieces are missing from his face.
They write that the work reflects the three artists’ dashed hopes that President Obama will reform the criminal justice system and grant clemency to death row inmates.
Artists Yuri Kadamov, Aquila Barnett, and Lesmond Mitchell were able to work together on this work without sharing the same space. The three men slipped the canvas under the cell’s iron door and handed it to a fellow inmate, who then passed the work on to their next partner.
However, this work was not completely completed.
Mitchell, the only Native American inmate on federal death row, was executed on August 26, 2020, at the age of 38, for first-degree murder.
It’s important considering that This unfinished portrait is located in a building that represents what Hawkins calls the “unfinished works” of Lincoln’s legacy.
”[Lincoln] “She recognized during her lifetime that her role was simply to push the rock a little further up the hill, where she would fail and that others who would come after him would fail as well.” Told. It took everyone to continue this ideal, this promise. ”
The cottage grounds are located at the highest point in Washington, DC and were the seasonal residence of the 16th President and his family. According to Hawkins, while staying at the vacation home (then called the Soldier’s Home) in 1862, Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Preliminary Proclamation in his second-floor bedroom.
This was “legally to free American slaves,” Ritter said.
“Mass incarceration in the United States has been called the New Jim Crow. In the room where Lincoln quite literally wrote his thoughts, art created by people still in prison and doing slave labor “I think it’s a really interesting tension that there’s a lot of freedom for people in America,” she said.
The Declaration was enacted by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution by 1865. It states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States or any place subject to its jurisdiction, except as punishment for a crime of which the person shall have been duly convicted.” It is stipulated that . ”
Kibet said the amendment provides this “loophole” for people who have been convicted of a crime. He said involuntary servitude remains legal for convicted felons, who are forced to work for next to no pay in prisons across the country once incarcerated.
Hawkins said it is important that the cottage be part of this exhibit because it is a key point in having important conversations about redressing injustice, which is the museum’s goal.
“It’s really important [Lincoln’s Cottage] So as not to mess up Lincoln. It’s about pulling him down, interrogating his policies and policies, and being honest about where that leaves us today,” she said.
For Kivet, this project and its themes embody a passion that has long focused on social justice issues while in prison.
That’s part of what gives him purpose and future goals while indoors, he said.
“The whole idea of this project is to let people on the outside know that we are still human and that we are all connected in some way in our humanity.”
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