Home Fires: Incarceration and Children

The pieces created for this exhibit are a meditation on the problems faced by families with incarcerated loved ones including, the financial and emotional costs that come from forced separation, policies that deny people the tiniest shred of human dignity, and the sense of helplessness that those outside often feel, combined with the deep frustration that comes from knowing in one’s bones that another world is possible.

More specifically, Paul and Kim considered how ridiculously difficult it is to mail things to and from prison, the cruelty of denying people in prison small things like art supplies, and the absurdity that we live in a country that continues to incarcerate people for life. Paul’s photo-realistic portraits come together with Kim’s embroidered collage work to show how mother and son are literally stitching together their creative practices across the walls as a way to resist death-making institutions, use art to theorize collective Black liberation, and make new worlds. This group show was held at the University of New England Galleries 2021-2022.

Paul, is my youngest son, and an incarcerated abolitionist artist sentenced to LWOP at the age of 19.