Human, Too

Opening from 5PM to 8PM
Friday, April 24th

Exhibition Statement:

An insidious barrier to seeing others as human is the inability to see them at all.

Through physical separation, incarceration makes people invisible to their community. Even so, conversations about them continue on without them. This exhibition illuminates a mere handful of these perspectives, amplifying an often-excluded side of this dialogue: personal experiences as articulated by the very people who lived them.

Human, too includes paper artworks produced and curated by the artists of Chance 4 Change, a 90-day substance abuse recovery program housed within Louisville Metro Department of Corrections, during their incarceration there. Chance 4 Change seeks to reduce recidivism as a voluntary recovery program for those motivated to begin the process while in custody, rather than waiting for their release.*

“Chance 4 Change can save lives.”  — Steven Hicks  

Within incarceration, endeavors of creative problem-solving are commonplace, as inventive substitutions replace ordinary items deemed to be contraband. In the absence of thread, the C4C artists twisted their own from strips of paper (access to which is a privilege in its own right as LMDC is now a paperless facility), enabling them to stab-bind books, even piercing their pages with golf pencils rather than awls. As such, the tedious nature of these artworks imbues each hand-fabricated element with the collective investment and intentionality of a shared goal.

In some cases, the materiality of this carceral environment served as both medium and subject matter. Utilizing found-object frottage, prints, and assemblages, these artworks both record and transfigure the mundanity of incarceration. One such work, a “quilted” amalgamation of milk cartons, intertwines a carceral material with a domestic form, conflating the discomfort of jail with the comfort of home. Six days a week, these artists received cartons of milk with their breakfast trays. Six days a week, these artists saved, cleaned, disassembled, and tore down those cartons by hand. Each “quilt square” utilized four altered cartons, requiring a cumulative 60 for its fabrication, however, this total is disingenuous to the time and labor spent on their process. This metric alone cannot account for the numerous cartons thrown out or destroyed during dorm relocations and shakedowns. The true number of found objects required to build even this singular artwork cannot be known because of the conditions inherent to its construction.    

In reflecting on their intersecting experiences of incarceration and addiction, the C4C artists expressed shared sentiments of isolation, disregard, apathy, grief, misunderstanding, and wasted potential, alongside echoes of, “We are not bad people, we have just made some bad decisions.” The recurring theme of these curatorial discussions ultimately emerged as our exhibition title. These artists—as people incarcerated, as people recovering—are human, too, and just as deserving as anyone else to learn, grow, and express themselves. Creating works of art not only rallied these collaborating artists toward a collective goal and the subsequent self-fulfillment that comes from accomplishing it together, but also challenged their ideas of what art could be and who should be allowed to make it. Destabilizing their preconceived notions on art inspired them to make creative works for themselves, for each other, and for their local community.                                                        

As evident in these artists, people can change, and there are members of our community who are actively choosing to put in the work to do so each and every day, whether or not their effort is visible to others. Their lives, their journeys, and their artworks have meaning and significance, regardless of their status within the arduous evolutions of self intrinsic to recovery and incarceration.

Choosing to see the humanity in one another is an act of care that cannot be overstated. The Chance 4 Change program epitomizes the concrete impact of care in action—not to extend humanity, but rather to recognize it as it already exists within each of us. These artworks offer the local community a chance to do the same, affirming that those living with addictions and those living in incarceration are, in fact, human, too, and deserve to be regarded as such.

* Initiated in 2008 as “Enough is Enough,” Chance 4 Change continues to offer a foundation of substance use disorder recovery education, a positive support structure, and effective coping skills to those in custody at LMDC. C4C uses evidence-based education, such as 12-step education, recovery education, relapse prevention, trauma-informed recovery, and psychoeducation. The program works with a variety of community partners, such as the VOA for parenting classes, music therapists, Goodwill Soft-Skills academy, the Isaiah House, Flip the Script, and local artist volunteers.

Artists

Acknowledgements

As the artists, we want to extend the utmost gratitude to our Chance 4 Change Coordinators, Iyan Wickel and Kelsey O’Neal, as well our visiting artist, Erica Lewis, without whom this project would not be possible. Many thanks to the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections for its material and financial support of this project and exhibition. We additionally want to extend thanks to the University of Louisville’s Department of Interdisciplinary & Public Humanities and to the Portland Museum.