Art & Incarceration: Frameworks for Freedom, A Community Conversation

Free - register through Dix Park Conservancy

How art can break down barriers and empower those impacted by incarceration?

Creative catalyst Mike Williams will moderate a discussion with curator and scholar Dr. Nicole Fleetwood, formerly incarcerated artist Sherrill Roland, and Sue Etheridge, who worked as an art therapist in the NC Pr*son system for over 25 years.

Examining art-making as behavior, and the art piece as a record of behavior, panelists will explore the role of art in restorative processes for prisoners and, more broadly, the potential of art-making to genuinely propel society toward new ways of being and fresh perspectives on equity, liberation, and connection.

Dr. Nicole Fleetwood, a MacArthur Fellow, is a writer, curator, and art critic whose interests are contemporary Black diasporic art and visual culture, photography studies, art and public practice, performance studies, gender and feminist studies, Black cultural history, creative nonfiction, Pr*son abolition and carceral studies, and poverty studies. She is the author of Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, winner of the National Book Critics Award in Criticism, the John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, the Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship, and both the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award in art history and the Frank Jewett Mather Award in art criticism. She is also the curator of the exhibition, Marking Time: Art in the Era of Mass Incarceration, which was listed as “one of the most important art moments in 2020” by The New York Times and among the best shows of the year by The New Yorker and Hyperallergic.

Sherrill Roland’s interdisciplinary practice deals with concepts of innocence, identity, and community; reimagining their social and political implications in the context of the American criminal justice system. For more than three years, Roland's right to self-determination was lost to wrongful incarceration. After spending ten months in Pr*son for a crime he was later exonerated for, he returned to his artistic practice, which he now uses as a vehicle for self-reflection and an outlet for emotional release. Converting the haunting nuances of his experiences into drawings, sculptures, multimedia objects, performances, and participatory activities, Roland shares his story and creates space for others to do the same, illuminating the invisible costs, damages, and burdens of incarceration.

Sue Etheridge has had a career working in prisons as an art therapist for twenty-five years. She has a deep belief that creativity and beauty are basic human needs. As art therapist, she has been responsible for providing art therapy assessment and treatment services to incarcerated psychiatric patients through art. Her work with inmates also serves to enhance the therapeutic environment of the Pr*son hospital. She facilitates opportunities for inmates to have creative self-expression and contribute to aesthetic improvements in their lives. Etheridge has been accustomed to working entirely behind closed doors until recent requests for interviews have made her work better known by the public, largely since having been chosen as an Unsung Hero of Compassion by the Dalai Lama Foundation. This recognition came about because of her involvement in “The Missing Peace,” a major art exhibit honoring the peacemaking efforts of His Holiness. Following that honor, she has been interviewed by radio and print media and has been named Alumnus of the Year by her alma mater, California Baptist University. In addition, Etheridge is a long-time participant in the Lucy Daniels Foundation, which works at the crossroads of creativity and psychoanalysis. She is also a volunteer at the North Carolina Museum of Art.

Michael S. Williams fosters community engagement and organizational change through art and dialogue as both a consultant and founder of Black On Black Project. Williams connects people across spaces and experiences to explore and respond to the challenges shaping our communities. Williams graduated from North Carolina Central University and spent 16 years in media with roles centered on content creation and community building. He has curated more than 30 art projects and programs across the state in partnership with municipalities, local businesses, and nonprofits and is the executive producer of ten short films. Across projects, settings, and North Carolina, he introduces new ways of thinking and problem solving. This work is grounded in his belief that through creativity, cultural empathy can transform communities.

Image credit: website of Dr. Nicole Fleetwood, view of exhibition, Brown University

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