The Prison Reimagined: Presidential Portrait Project exhibition options art work by incarcerated artists critiquing the U.S. justice system and is on show at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C.

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The Prison Reimagined: Presidential Portrait Project exhibition options art work by incarcerated artists critiquing the U.S. justice system and is on show at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C.

Catie Dull/NPR

Caddell Kivett was watching the inauguration of President Biden on Jan. 20, 2021, when the thread of an concept started to kind.

He was impressed by Amanda Gorman, who took the rostrum and skim her poem The Hill We Climb, which says, partly:

“We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what ‘just’ is isn’t always justice. …”

It was then that he actually began considering, Kivett instructed NPR.

“Some of the words of that poem just really touched how I feel about our country,” he stated.

And these emotions are sophisticated, to say the least.

Kivett, 53, is serving an 80-year jail sentence for assault-related fees.

He’s spent about 14 years incarcerated in North Carolina on the mercy of the U.S. felony justice system and insurance policies established by U.S. presidents, together with Biden.

When the inauguration ceremony concluded, Kivett returned to his cell at Nash Correctional Institution in Nashville, N.C., the place he is been for the previous eight years. He started to mull over a “kind of improbable idea” because the phrases of Gorman’s poem, “The norms and notions of what ‘just’ is isn’t always justice,” cycled by means of his thoughts.

He stated he thought-about: What if there was a technique to harness the voices of the incarcerated to critique this so-called justice system and to problem the thought of what true justice in America might seem like?

“Most people on the outside don’t know what is going on in here,” Kivett stated. “And so, we just accept that this is how things are to be done and the correct response to people who commit harms or violence is to just lock them away.”

Caddell Kivett’s brainchild, Prison Reimagined: Presidential Portrait Project, launched at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C., this month.

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He is surrounded by artists at Nash Correctional and thought of methods to take that expertise and use it to push ahead these questions and concepts, he stated.

These ideas that began as only a flicker in his thoughts in 2021 took years and complicated coordination with advocates from Justice Arts Coalition, equivalent to founder and director Wendy Jason and packages assistant Janie Ritter, to come back to fruition. But this month Kivett’s brainchild, an exhibit titled Prison Reimagined: Presidential Portrait Project, was revealed to the general public at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C.

The exhibit of 46 items of artwork and writing was curated by the Committee of Incarcerated Writers and Artists, whose members all presently dwell throughout the carceral system throughout the U.S. In addition to Justice Arts Coalition, a bunch that helps imprisoned artists, the exhibit was coordinated by employees at Lincoln’s Cottage.

The exhibit, which prices guests between $4 and $10, will proceed by means of Feb. 19. It might later head to some extra venues however that is but to be confirmed. The items, nevertheless, could be purchased as soon as the present exhibit has completed with all proceeds going on to the artists.

The artwork items embody completely different takes on portraits of U.S. presidents, amongst them Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and put these leaders’ information on felony justice underneath the microscope.

The exhibition focuses on varied presidents, together with Presidents Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden (backside left) and Richard Nixon.

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The exhibition focuses on varied presidents, together with Presidents Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden (backside left) and Richard Nixon.

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The difficulties of coordinating the exhibit from behind bars

Wendy Jason is the founder and director of the Justice Arts Coalition in Takoma Park, Md.

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Wendy Jason is the founder and director of the Justice Arts Coalition in Takoma Park, Md.

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From the second Kivett reached out to the Justice Arts Coalition in early 2021, the wheels began turning, even when slowly, and never with out some hurdles. Ritter, nonetheless, labored to make sure that Kivett stored company over the venture.

“It was his idea. I wanted him to make the decisions,” she stated. “And, of course, a lot of the decisions couldn’t be made from inside. They had to be facilitated outside.”

Discussing the framework of the venture with each other was among the many challenges as a result of Kivett has restricted skill to name or e mail from his cell. And the artists whom Ritter and Jason contacted to contribute to the venture are situated in prisons all through the nation and rely closely on snail mail to correspond.

Watercolor work, combined media collages and coloured pencil portraits are actually hanging in Lincoln’s Cottage.

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Watercolor work, combined media collages and coloured pencil portraits are actually hanging in Lincoln’s Cottage.

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Gradually, the artists started sending of their work to the group’s headquarters in Takoma Park, Md.

To get these works to Kivett and his Committee of Incarcerated Artists and Writers at Nash, who had been choosing the right items to exhibit, Ritter needed to ship 8-and-a-half-by-11 sized images of all of every piece and copies of the written submissions.

“At the same time, our mail system here was going under a transformation from paper to digital, which created a whole new slew of hurdles for us to get past,” Kivett stated.

Later on, Callie Hawkins, the chief director of Lincoln’s Cottage, despatched a replica of their flooring plan to information the committee in selecting the place to show every bit.

“It’s a massive space,” Hawkins stated. “I was blown away by their ideas for placement and groupings. And literally all our team did was place it on the wall where they directed us to.”

Janie Ritter is the packages assistant for Justice Arts Coalition. She needed to make sure Kivett stored company over the exhibition.

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Janie Ritter is the packages assistant for Justice Arts Coalition. She needed to make sure Kivett stored company over the exhibition.

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Kivett stated it was arduous to not really feel discouraged through the course of.

But, he stated, “This project is a testament to what can be accomplished if you don’t let discouragement stop your momentum.”

Kivett hopes as guests come to view the exhibit that they depart with a deeper understanding of the direct impacts of mass incarceration to critique the thought of whether or not incarceration is the true path to justice and that they are motivated to take considerations on to their politicians to make change.

“I hope everyone realizes that they’re all stakeholders. And I want them to realize what their individual part is in this process. And I hope they leave our show charged to do their part,” Kivett stated.

“Continuing to just cage people for harms committed in our country is not making us safer and not making us better as a nation,” he stated.

He recommends rerouting cash that’s being put into prisons and jails into communities that want it probably the most relatively than persevering with to spend money on the carceral system as it’s now.

President Lincoln’s Cottage gives a poignant venue

A portrait of President Bill Clinton and a collage of drawings of President George W. Bush are on show at Lincoln’s Cottage.

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A portrait of President Bill Clinton and a collage of drawings of President George W. Bush are on show at Lincoln’s Cottage.

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Watercolor work, combined media collages and coloured pencil portraits are actually hanging in Lincoln’s Cottage in what was the president’s former library, eating room and bed room some 160 years in the past.

Some of the items are of Lincoln himself.

A combined media collage created by Robert Spence incorporates images of Black Lives Matters protests surrounding a portrait of Lincoln. Spence writes of this piece, “There are so many hidden (and not so hidden) racial biases and struggles that still exist in America. I wonder what President Lincoln would say if he was alive today. ‘What happened to America?’ “

Other items goal Lincoln’s newer successors.

The works replicate on how every administration and the insurance policies they signed into legislation have impacted prisoners and contributed to the present state of the U.S. felony justice system, which has locked up nearly 2 million individuals — a disproportionate number of whom are Black Americans.

A combined media work that includes a portrait of President Abraham Lincoln is on show on the exhibition.

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A combined media work that includes a portrait of President Abraham Lincoln is on show on the exhibition.

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Like former President Bill Clinton and his signing of the 1994 Crime Bill. Critics of this invoice have said it’s liable for this mass incarceration of Black Americans.

Artist Mike Tran used this occasion to encourage his portray on Clinton.

Tran writes, “The 3 Strikes Law (the 1994 Crime Bill), designed as a crime deterrent, serves to prove how inadequate the ‘rehabilitation’ system is. Rehabilitation is not putting a person in a box for life. It is helping that person realize why they did what they did, who they harmed with their actions, and replacing those behaviors with prosocial thoughts and beliefs.”

Tran painted a skewed model of Clinton’s presidential portrait, writing:

“I wanted to weave these ideas into President Clinton’s portrait, as he was instrumental in the passing of this law. I wanted the symbolism in the piece to be subtle, hence the three small cigars on his collar and intentional blurring of the American Flag, but once you realize them, you can’t look away.”

Not all items put the presidents in a seemingly unfavourable gentle.

In a portrait by Brian Hindson, he contemplates on his complicated emotions about Trump, who signed the First Step Act into legislation in 2018. This legislation, among many other things, lowered jail sentences for sure nonviolent offenders.

Hindson, who on the time of ending his portray spent 15 years within the federal jail system, writes after that legislation handed he noticed that “people were leaving in droves” and that overcrowding within the federal jail system “was actually being addressed.”

That leaves Hindson with contradictory emotions about Trump. He painted Trump’s face cut up and divided into completely different items, every painted a special coloration.

“As controversial, polarizing, and divisive as Trump was and can be, he’s the only President that did something that benefitted every federal inmate. The style I picked was my fractured art. All the pieces make him up. All the bad stuff too. Much like all of us, it’s pieces of us. All the pieces make the whole,” Hindson wrote.

A six-panel set up by artists Yuri Kadamov, Aquilla Barnette and Lezmond Mitchell depicts President Barack Obama.

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A six-panel set up by artists Yuri Kadamov, Aquilla Barnette and Lezmond Mitchell depicts President Barack Obama.

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The exhibit’s largest piece is a 72-by-40-inch, six-panel set up that hangs within the heart of the cottage’s sitting room wall.

It’s an attention-grabbing portrait with an much more putting story.

The topic of the piece is apparent: former President Obama. Except his face is distorted with puzzle items lacking from his face.

It displays the three artists’ damaged hopes of Obama reforming the felony justice system and granting clemency to males on loss of life row — a dream of the three males who painted it, they wrote.

The artists, Yuri Kadamov, Aquilla Barnette, and Lezmond Mitchell, managed to work collectively on this piece with out ever sharing the identical area. The three males slid canvases underneath the metal doorways of their cells and handed it off to a fellow inmate who would move the work on to the subsequent collaborator.

The piece, nevertheless, was by no means absolutely completed.

Mitchell, who was the one Native American on federal loss of life row, was executed on Aug. 26, 2020, on the age of 38 for first-degree homicide.

Callie Hawkins is the chief director at President Lincoln’s Cottage. Her crew labored with Kivett on arranging and hanging the art work within the president’s former library, eating room and bed room.

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Callie Hawkins is the chief director at President Lincoln’s Cottage. Her crew labored with Kivett on arranging and hanging the art work within the president’s former library, eating room and bed room.

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It’s vital on condition that this incomplete portrait sits in a constructing that represents what Hawkins calls “that unfinished work” of Lincoln’s legacy.

“[Lincoln] recognized in his own lifetime, that his role was just to push the boulder a little further up the hill, and there he was going to fall short, that others who came after him were going to fall short,” she stated. “And then it was going to take everyone to continue this ideal, this promise.”

The web site of the cottage is on the highest level of Washington, D.C. It was the seasonal house of the sixteenth president and his household. While on the cottage in 1862 (then known as the Soldiers Home), Lincoln developed the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in an upstairs bed room, Hawkins stated.

This was “legally supposed to free slaves in America,” Ritter stated.

“Mass incarceration in the U.S. has been referred to as the New Jim Crow. I think it’s such an interesting tension to have artwork created by folks who are still inside, who do slave labor, in the room where Lincoln quite literally wrote out his thoughts for freeing those people in America,” she stated.

The Proclamation was enshrined in the 13th Amendment by 1865. It says that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

A portrait of President Abraham Lincoln sits on a mantel at Lincoln’s Cottage.

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A portrait of President Abraham Lincoln sits on a mantel at Lincoln’s Cottage.

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Kivett stated this modification supplies this “loophole” for these convicted of a criminal offense. He stated involuntary servitude remains to be authorized for convicted felons, who when incarcerated, are pressured into work that pays little to nothing in prisons throughout the nation.

Hawkins stated it was essential for the cottage to be part of this exhibit because it supplied an essential level to carry essential conversations round rectifying injustice — a objective of the museum.

“It’s really important to [Lincoln’s Cottage] to not put Lincoln on a pedestal. To take him down, to interrogate him, his policies, and to really be honest about where that leaves us today,” she stated.

For Kivett, the venture and its themes are the embodiment of years of focus and fervour on social justice points whereas in jail.

It’s a part of what offers him objective and targets for the long run whereas inside, he stated.

“The big picture of the project is to let people on the outside know that we are still people, and that we are still connected somehow in our humanity.”