SERVING LIFE
EXHIBIT
Who lives on death row? Explore this traveling, interactive installation to discover some of the answers. Featuring Life Maps by incarcerated men, large scale artist renderings of elements from those maps, Virtual Reality, and audio.
EXHIBIT PANELS
Click on the image below to view full pdf
INSTALLATIONS
LIFE MAPS & OBJECTS
Life Maps created by residents on death row and Objects as responses from collaborating artists.
THE CALLING
Trial documents, newspaper articles, and certificates from prison surround doorways that open to new perspectives.
A curtained space invites viewers to experience a life-sized, illuminated image of the mapmaker’s childhood family.
LOST & FOUND
Beneath his gold inscribed Arabic name, symbols mark significant life events leading to his States of Mine.
Each motel drawer explores a graphic moment from the mapmaker’s life, beginning with “My first crib was a drawer in a motel room.”
THE MASKED MAN
This map includes a roach motel home, a cemetery, and a Pain and Fear box hiding the many masks of an abusive father.
Behind the eye sockets of the enormous masks, viewers can read the mapmaker’s inner memories and thoughts.
WHITE MOVES FIRST
On this chessboard, each chess piece represents an aspect of childhood in a New York ghetto.
A knight with bone teeth and black flowers. A knight moves in an L and suggests the El train near the mapmaker’s neighborhood.
DO NOT PASS GO
A rigged Monopoly game with properties from the mapmaker’s neighborhood, where every corner says, “Go straight to Jail.”
A large floorcloth invites viewers to explore cards in this Community Chest, where the odds of arrest outweigh every other option.
NO EXIT
The Velcro school bus sign (torn from an old pair of sneakers) peels back to expose a new text: School to Prison Pipeline. Windows lower to reveal photo of the young mapmaker.
A children’s wooden “toy” bus travels on a one-way, dead-end track. Wood flaps cover quotes from the mapmaker.
RETROGRADE
Astronauts float, lost in space, surrounded by planets representing incidents in the mapmaker’s life.
The large, planet mobile beckons lights and text from the mapmaker.
ALL THAT GLITTERS
A superficial view of the mapmaker’s glittering hometown obscures the underside of the monuments, which lift to reveal a very different experience.
Crossroads installation expresses the mapmaker’s perspective on this “shining city on a hill.”
DREAMCATCHERS
The tree questions how the mapmaker’s life might have been different with inspiration and instruction (roots) from his Indian heritage.
Polished cedar tree root structure holds ceramic dreamcatchers on a handcrafted table with compass directions.
ON SECOND THOUGHT
The journey winds through a childhood struggle with mental illness and the institutions that failed to help, including abusive youth detention centers.
Virtual Reality using Story Spheres.
SCALES OF JUSTICE
The railroad of poverty and violence dead ends at prison, but faith remains.
In this scale, viewers can move the weights, but the building blocks of injustice always outweigh innocence.
REFLECTIONS
A self-portrait drawn from the mapmaker’s reflection in the cell’s steel toilet-sink. The
fragments offer insights and reflections on his life.
The viewer’s own reflection brings them into the brushed steel questions about jury bias and justice.
VISITATION BOOTHS
Copies of letters from prisoners across the US.
Phones to record audio responses and paper to write letters.
AUDIO RECORDINGS
Listen to men living on death row as they read stories
from the Right Here, Right Now Story Cycle.
