“Art Against the Odds” Shows the Humanity of Wisconsin’s Prison Artists

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A forthcoming exhibition, “Art Against the Odds: Wisconsin Prison Art,” to be presented by The Portrait Society Gallery of Contemporary Art (PSG), demands our attention. Beyond being a powerful art show, it has much to say about our criminal justice system and mass incarceration. Presenting the expressive work of 65 prison artists and examining the penal system within which they create, the exhibition aims to pierce prison walls and counter the invisibility which those walls otherwise impose on so many in our society.

Slogans like “Soft on Crime,” and “Lock ’Em Up” punctuate our politics. America incarcerates more persons than any other nation on Earth. In Wisconsin about 40,000 individuals are in adult correctional institutions and more than 60,000 adults are under community supervision at any one time. Our state incarcerates more Blacks proportionate to their percentage of the population than does any other state in the nation.

When removed from our communities, prisoners become little more than statistics for most of us, if we think of them at all. “Art Against the Odds” seeks to counter this dismissive tendency and rather to humanize prisoners as broader and more complex human beings than as characterized merely by their criminal records. In turn, the exhibition questions whether “those people” locked away in our prisons aren’t in the full breadth of their being perhaps worthy of being treated differently than in the ways our harsh penal system currently does?

Life Still Has Meaning

Debra Brehmer, Portrait Society’s director, stresses that “art is a mirror that reflects the maker as a person with the courage and desire to move beyond their criminal history.” One of the artists echoes this: “[Art] is a way to share a piece of myself in such a way that it connects me to others, provides me with some validation that I am not truly lost to society, that my life still has meaning despite my current predicament.”

Nor is this an abstract humanitarian concern. Ninety-five percent of prisoners will be released and rejoin our communities. Wisconsin state and local governments spend approximately $1.5 billion annually on our correctional systems, substantially more than other states our size. Engaging with these prisoners’ art will give us a window by which to judge the reasonability of our current penal system, so expensive in taxes and spendthrift of human potential.

To facilitate this questioning, exhibition programming will include two panel conversations among former prisoners and others actively engaged with our penal system. The first panel, “Correcting The Narrative: Realities and Reform in Our Prison System,” will focus on such issues as rehabilitation, reentry, restorative justice and possible prison reforms. The second panel, “Carceral Aesthetics: Making Art In Prison,” will feature formerly imprisoned artists, discussing the intent, processes, and challenges of creating in confinement.

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To underscore the significance of this exhibition, Portrait Society has published a stunning 187-page catalogue, featuring scores of color plates and five essays by individuals involved in our prisons, with prisoners, and with art in varied ways.

“Art Against the Odds” will be hosted in the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) galleries, January 19-March 13. The panel “Correcting the Narrative: Realities and Reform in Our Prison System” will take place on February 2, and “Carceral Aesthetics: Making Art In Prison” on February 9, both at 7 p.m. at MIAD. Free docent led tours will be available Wednesdays and Saturdays at 11:30 a.m. through the run of the show.

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