(photo by Jose Lima/News Travels Fast)
Florida International University’s Frost Art Museum, the Smithsonian Affiliate in Miami, announces a powerful new season of exhibitions and programming for Art Basel Season 2018 in Miami.
The Writing on the Wall, presented by Hank Willis Thomas and Dr. Baz Dreisinger (on view through December 9), is a collaborative installation that raises awareness about mass incarceration. The U.S. is the world leader in incarceration, followed by Rwanda and Russia. In the U.S. alone, there are 2.2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails – a 500% increase over the last 40 years, according to The Sentencing Project.
On the gallery walls are essays, poems, letters, stories, diagrams, and notes written by individuals incarcerated in prisons around the world, including the United States, Australia, Brazil, Norway and Uganda. During her years teaching in prisons, Dr. Dreisinger compiled these materials consisting of hand-written or typed messages by inmates.
The Writing on the Wall is part of the monumental art project For Freedoms, founded by artists Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman. The fifty-state initiative is the largest creative collaboration in U.S. history. Through non-partisan nationwide programming, For Freedoms uses art as a vehicle to deepen public discussions on civic issues and core values and serves as a hub for artists, arts institutions, and citizens who want to be more engaged in public life.
“Our new season opens up a dialogue about global commonalities rather than differences, from ecological changes to societal values around the world” said the Director of the Frost Art Museum FIU, Dr. Jordana Pomeroy.
Voters in the State of Florida midterms just recently approved Amendment 4,to restore the right to vote for millions of people with prior felony convictions upon completion of their sentences(except those convicted of murder or other more serious felony offenses).
Approximately 1.6 million people will be granted the right to vote in Florida elections because of Amendment 4. A disproportionate share of those arrested and incarcerated in Florida are minorities, particularly African-Americans. In 2016, more than 418,000 black people (17.9 percent of potential black voters in Florida) couldn’t vote due to their past felony conviction.