Saturday, September 4, 2010

What Cannot be Taken Away: Families and Prisons Project


WE just visited Evan Bissell's show at SOMArts called What Cannot be Taken Away: Families and Prisons Project. The show grew out of a series of workshops and dialogues between the artist, incarcerated men and local youth with incarcerated parents. Bissell documented and displayed the process of the project in order to emphasize the collaborative nature of the portraits on display. The exhibition also includes interactive wall drawings, installation pieces and audio. The show will run through September 19th. Be sure to check it out! Additionally, Evan Bissell will be offering a visual arts workshop related to healing and justice on Saturday 11, 2010.


There are over seven million youth in this country with parents in the legal justice system.

Public Secrets


















According to Sharon Daniel, creator of Public Secrets: there are secrets that are kept from the public and then there are "public secrets" - secrets that the public chooses to keep safe from itself, like, "don't ask, don't tell." The public secret is an aporia - an irresolvable internal contradiction between inside and outside, power and knowledge. Public Secrets is an interactive testimonial in which women incarcerated in the California State Prison System reveal the secrets of the war on drugs, the criminal justice system, and the prison industrial complex.

Explore Public Secrets' stunning website and hear the voices of women incarcerated in the California Prison System.