Prison Art as an Assertion of Humanity with Patricia Sigala and Chloe Accardi
[opening strum of Encounter Culture theme music]
[00:00:00] Chloe Accardi: So much of, you know, the broader prison system strips individuals of their names, of their stories, of their families. Just so much of the system is set up to punish and dehumanize. And so, a lot of what this exhibition is trying to do is primarily through the artworks that these individuals have created, restore that humanity to these artists and to these prisoners.
And it’s really looking at. The creation of art as like an act of resistance, as a reassertion of humanity, that prisoners aren’t just ID numbers, they’re people.
[00:00:38] Emily Withnall: ¡Bienvienidos! This is Encounter Culture from the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. I’m your host and editor of El Palacio magazine, Emily Withnall.
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[00:00:51] Emily: Art and writing can often be the only forms of expression available to people who are incarcerated. The art expressed in confinement can reveal the things the artist holds dear. places, cultures, family, and other themes that keep them going.
[00:01:13] I used to teach creative writing to women in jail, and every time I’d arrive with a poetry prompt—any prompt at all—the women would almost always write about their children. As they wrote their poems, I’d study their drawings on the cinder block walls surrounding us. There were a lot of birds and hearts and musical notes. Inspirational quotes too. There was nothing inspirational about the harsh fluorescent lighting and whitewashed cinder blocks, but I was always moved by the women’s art and words that reached for connections to the past and to a better future.
[00:01:54] Later, I taught in juvenile detention. My classes were mainly filled with young men, and I learned that young women and non-binary youth were often sent to residential treatment instead. Like the women in jail, the young men I taught were not confident in their abilities and felt that their voices and stories didn’t matter.
[00:02:15] Later this summer, on August 9th, a new exhibition will be opening at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe that shares the art and experiences of incarcerated artists in New Mexico and across the United States. For Museum of International Folk Art curators, Patricia Sigala and Chloe Accardi, the stories of incarcerated artists are very important and relevant to us all.
[00:02:41] The upcoming exhibition, Between the Lines: Prison Art & Advocacy, has been a long time in the making. As Patricia shares in our conversation, the seeds for the idea were planted in 2015 with her involvement in The Brown versus the Board of Education School-to-prison pipeline initiative.
This is also when she began working with Chloe. Together, Patricia and Chloe have worked alongside formerly incarcerated artists and community members to create an exhibition that shares the individual and collective stories of the way incarceration impacts lives and communities. Please join us as we discuss all of this and more.
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[00:03:26] Emily: Welcome Patricia and Chloe to Encounter Culture. It’s so good to have you both here.
Patricia Sigala: Thank you.
Chloe Accardi: Thank you.
Emily: I wanna get started with intros.
[00:03:33] Patricia: Sure. I am Patricia Sigala and I work in education focusing on community outreach and engagement.
[00:03:42] Chloe: I’m Chloe Accardi. I’m a folklorist and a documentary artist, and I focus on community engagement, and I’m a media specialist at the museum.
[00:03:50] Emily: I’d love to have you elaborate a little bit on what all of those things mean. Like what do you actually do in these roles?
[00:03:57] Patricia: Well, I work a lot with schools, with students, teachers coordinating and bringing in artists and scheduling field trips for students. And teaching and facilitating and coordinating museum school partnerships.
And then I’ve had the opportunity to work with the Gallery of Conscience team over the last ten years, and we have deepened conversations with community internationally, locally, and brought in voices that otherwise may not have been included in other exhibits or programming.
[00:04:34] Chloe: I wonder if we should say more about the Gallery of Conscience.
Patricia: Yes.
Chloe: In general, right? I mean, since you brought it up, it’s a really unique space in the museum and in museums in general. It’s been operating for over a decade now. And you know what makes it unique inside of MOIFA is that it’s a team of staff members and so sometimes… More recently, it’s been Patricia and I, but often we have 3, 4, 5 staff members working as like part of the collective brain power team of the Gallery of Conscience.
And that’s a different model from some of the other exhibits that are developed where it’s primarily a lead curator and they’re working in community. And the Gallery of Conscience is, it’s the team of MOIFA staff working with the community.
[00:05:16] Emily: So, is that the idea behind the Gallery of Conscience is it’s a collaboration with the community—is that what makes it a distinct space from the other spaces in the museum?
[00:05:25] Chloe: Yeah, absolutely. Though every exhibit that’s done at MOIFA is a collaboration with community and with source artists. So that’s what every curator is doing. But the GOC is more experimental in the way that we look at it as a prototype space.
And so, a lot of the other exhibits, they’re created behind the scenes for years and then they open. And while there are dynamic elements in those spaces where, you know, new work and like the education wing is being created and you know, visitors are writing their thoughts and reflections. What’s on the walls in those spaces stays. It’s permanent. It looks like what it looked like when it opened and when it closes. And the Gallery of Conscience, a lot of the exhibits that we’ve done in the past decade look different on day one, and then when they close. So, for example, a number of years ago, we opened the Gallery of Conscience with just butcher paper on the wall with rough concepts of an exhibit where we were fleshing it out too.
[00:06:25] So, we were fleshing it out internally in the museum, and we were really using visitor input and artist input to help flesh out the ideas of what the final exhibit was gonna be. So, like we opened with, yeah, it was like Sharpie and butcher paper and Post-its on the walls.
It’s an opportunity for visitors to see how things are developed, but more importantly for them to say, I wanna know more about this topic, I wanna know more about where this artist came from, or how they source their materials or the complications and selling in the global marketplace—like whatever it might be. The Gallery of Conscience team takes that input and then tries to respond to what visitors are asking for.
[00:07:04] Emily: That’s such a good segue into our topic for today, but before we move into that, did you wanna expand a little bit on what all your roles mean?
[00:07:12] Chloe: Yeah, sure. I’m a folklorist, so my background is in ethnography and field work, and what I really focus on is called creative ethnography. So, a lot of what I do at the museum is co-produced media, so oftentimes videos, video portraits of artists and communities, and it’s really giving voice to the artists.
You know, we have these incredible artworks at the museum. Some of them are newly created, some of them are hundreds of years old. And what we really love to do when we can is pair an artwork with a voice and a face. And so sometimes I’ll get to go with curators and do location interviews, portraits of artists, and it’s really nice to see the face and hear the voice and see the hands of the artists that are making these incredible works.
So, I love getting a portrait and a snapshot of artists at work of them in their homes, in their spaces with their families, and that really helps create a fuller picture of the artwork and the culture that it’s coming from.
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[00:08:31] Emily: Well, I would love to dive in now to the topic that we’re here to talk about, which is the upcoming exhibition Between the Lines: Prison Art & Advocacy. So, can you talk a little bit about how this exhibition came to be, the idea for it?
[00:08:40] Patricia: The museum actually had an exhibit, I believe it was in 1996. It was a paño exhibit based primarily on paños that had been collected, and it really sparked an interest in the curator of Hispano Spanish Colonial to continue to collect.
But because we’re an international museum, the other curators also had opportunities to collect international art that was made by artists that were incarcerated.
Emily: Can you describe what a paño is?
Patricia: Sure. Handkerchief art, cotton handkerchief art that is made with handkerchiefs or in some cases, pillowcases, bedsheets, using tools, pencils, colored pencils, ink, pens, sometimes using different organic products to create color dye. Maybe an aspect on the paño itself if they don’t have the color. So, finding creative ways to design the paño with what they have.
[00:09:48] Chloe: And paños are one of the art forms that it’s easier to get out of prison. So oftentimes artists will draw them and then because they are lightweight and they’re foldable, they’re able to mail them out to friends or family members. And not that that’s an easy feat. They have to save up and it can take weeks or months, but they are something that is often mailed out of prisons.
[00:10:10] Patricia: So, our collection had been growing and Chloe and I worked together for the first time through the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, we worked on a Brown v. Board School-to-prison pipeline initiative, which really looked at some of the root causes of that pipeline with youth and explored themes of advocacy of what’s happening to youth and how can we make a difference.
And we continued the conversation with community. We would get pointed in the direction of, oh, “There’s this person that you should talk to. This individual might have something that you’d be interested in learning more about and making a connection with.” So, administration at the Folk Art Museum just really saw the value in the work, the conversations and the contributions by community, and we started to form the team around the prison art exhibit.
So, it’s been in the works for say at least five to seven years. We’ve just been on this journey. We’re learning a lot about mass incarceration and connecting with not only youth, but families, community. And that is informing the next exhibition, which will open in August.
[00:11:35] Emily: What’s an example of something that you’ve learned already?
[00:11:38] Chloe: We’ve learned in our field work and in our work with local organizations, YouthWorks, doing programs at the Bernalillo Detention Center, just how many people are affected by incarceration.
And it’s not necessarily the people behind bars, but it’s all the people who are left outside with their loved ones, with their family members, with their friends that are removed from their lives and removed from society and the invisibility oftentimes of incarceration. Heartbreaking, but so important for us to talk about and that we want the exhibit to be in conversation with the ripple effects of mass incarceration.
In the prison system, prisoners don’t have names they have numbers, they have prison ID numbers, and so much of, you know, the broader prison system in the United States and internationally as well, strips individuals of their names, of their stories, of their families. Just so much of the system is set up to punish and dehumanize.
[00:12:36] And so, a lot of what this exhibition is trying to do is primarily through the artworks that these individuals have created, restore that humanity to these artists and to these prisoners. And it’s really looking at the creation of art as like an act of resistance, as a reassertion of humanity, an assertion of personal story of family, of history, that prisoners aren’t just ID numbers, they’re people.
These works are incredible. I mean so often these prisoners are making incredible artworks out of nothing. So, what this exhibit is also excited to show visitors is just the creativity, the ingenuity, the resourcefulness of these people. They’re creating things from trash, from gum wrappers and cigarette packs and toothpicks and matchsticks and whatever they have available to them.
[00:13:26] Patricia: I would add that they also tell us on the outside and families that they’re still here. They’re creative, they’re vibrant, they have hearts, they have soul, and they want to assert that and let everyone know that they’re human.
[music + promo for CulturePass and Museum of International Folk Art]
[00:13:44] Emily: Did you know? The New Mexico CulturePass is now available to purchase online? CulturePass gives you access to each of the fifteen state museums and historic sites we feature on Encounter Culture. Reserve your CulturePass today at nmculture.org/visit/culturepass.
When they were young, my kids loved visiting the Museum of International Folk Art, where they could make Indonesian shadow puppets or play the gamelan.
The museum offers something for visitors of all ages, from hands-on crafts, interactive exhibitions and the world’s finest folk art. The Museum of International Folk Art connects people through creative expression and artistic traditions. Visit moifa.org for tickets, events, and more.
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[00:14:46] Emily: I would love to have you talk a little bit about the school-to-prison pipeline.
[00:14:50] Patricia: Yeah. It’s this kind of revolving door in the school systems that affects students who might be disciplined and put in detention and or expelled, and they possibly could have gotten arrested as a result of something that happened, some kind of infraction at school, and they get in the system and unless there’s an intervention, they could possibly never return to school and just continue if there’s no support to help them and their families, especially students of color.
Those opportunities aren’t always there for students of color and the way in which teachers and administration might look at students because of who they are or their family or where they live, can also impede their performance and advancement in school. So, it’s this system that tracks them and it becomes very oppressive.
And it’s something that we worked with youth here in Santa Fe through YouthWorks. They were part of our initiative, and we learned a lot from them locally about how that affects them and their families.
[00:16:06] Chloe: You know, once you’re in that system, it’s so difficult to get out, especially as a young person. And we found too that there’s often a correlation between students or young people who get into what we call the pipeline and them having an incarcerated parent.
And just looking again, that sort of ripple effect and that generational effect where oftentimes this system, or unfortunately even teachers or the school system aren’t seeing the full picture. Maybe for example, like there’s an issue with truancy or lateness or something like that, and they’re not realizing that this student is, say their father, their mother’s incarcerated, and they’re helping take care of their siblings.
Or maybe they’re even trying to work an afterschool job. Or a during school job because that’s what they have to do to help care for their family and help their parent out. It’s just a lack of visibility of some of the challenges that students and children of the incarcerated face.
[00:17:03] Emily: In the last season of the podcast, I had a conversation with the artists who had art up at Bosque Redondo, and we talked about the incarceration of the Diné and Ndé people there and the trauma and the impact that had on them over generations, even still to this day. Is that something that you’re seeing too in some of these stories? The community impact?
[00:17:28] Patricia: I would say yes. I have talked with generations of families and the trauma and the disenfranchisement of families, communities because they’re caught in this system. It’s long lasting.
And so, the advocacy part of this exhibit is to look at organizations and people on the outside that are helping to shape a future for those that are incarcerated. It’s happening, but I think there needs to be more, and I think that we really want to bring that awareness and educate the public to the need for that, just so that we have this humanity to want to heal them because when they come out, they’re coming into our communities, they’re coming into our families. It is in the best interest of the planet to take care of each other, and that trauma is huge.
[00:18:25] Emily: I appreciate that. I taught writing to youth and juvenile detention centers for a few years in Montana. I think it’s something that people don’t think about a lot how a lot of these stories are born out of poverty.
You know, it’s people fleeing domestic violence or trying to steal stuff to survive because they don’t have anything. I don’t think that gets talked about enough.
[00:18:48] Chloe: I think part of what’s been frustrating to us in learning about all of the ripple effects of mass incarceration, the effects on personal families, is just a need for more advocacy.
More awareness and more funding to organizations and programs that are supporting the rehabilitation of the imprisoned or who are supporting families. We mentioned like in the school-to-prison pipeline, perhaps there’s a student whose parent is incarcerated, and they could use more support. There’s some invisibility there, where maybe, you know, if they get funneled into the juvenile detention system, there isn’t support there.
That’s acknowledging that they’re coming from perhaps a one-parent home that’s struggling economically. And some of that invisibility, I think is the lack of support that that family could have. So much money goes into the prison system and incarceration, and wouldn’t it be great if some of that money went into rehabilitation?
So, we had less people in prison and less families affected by this.
[00:19:52] Emily: Do you think some of the invisibility comes from the stigma? Like even if someone has served their time, whatever that means, or whatever that looks like and they come out, there’s still this idea of this person being bad or wrong or a criminal?
[00:20:07] Chloe: Certainly. I mean, there’s a taboo. People know that people are locked up and they’re put out of sight, but there also isn’t enough talk about rehabilitation. A lot of this stems too, from the systemic oppression, the racism. Sometimes people think that, okay, you commit a crime and you’re locked up and you’re removed from society.
And this exhibit isn’t making judgements on individual crimes, it’s looking at the bigger picture, and some of the invisibility is in some people’s minds not acknowledging the larger systems that are funneling people into prison in the first place.
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[00:20:41] Emily: So, do you have any stats or numbers that you can share about incarceration in the United States?
[00:20:53] Chloe: Certainly. For example, in 2023, it was roughly 1.8 million people incarcerated in the United States. That includes criminal detention. Juvenile detention, it depends exactly who you’re counting as imprisoned. But yeah, upwards of 1.8 million people. The previous year was almost two million.
[00:21:14] Emily: So, these are huge issues. How do you take these huge issues and turn them into an exhibition? Like what does that look like? And what kind of information did you gather from people’s participation in the Gallery of Conscience?
[00:21:28] Chloe: I mean, it’s really delicate. It’s really delicate and it’s a real challenge. There are so many people that we want to reach with this exhibit. We need to be really sensitive. Like, on one hand we wanna educate people who don’t know a lot about mass incarceration and the effects that it has just on so many millions of people’s everyday lives.
But we also wanna be sensitive to those many, many people who are personally touched by the prison system. For example, we had a series of private dialogues over the summer where we brought youth in as a space of free association for them to see if the artworks were speaking to them what they wanted to talk about in like a private understanding safe space. And one of the exercises we have, it’s called a gallery walk. And so, we ask students to pick a piece of art that resonates with them and talk about it if they want to. And a young student loved the paños. They actually grew up drawing paños because one of their parents was incarcerated and they often got sent paños, I think they said every month.
And so, they love talking about the paños, but the student was really vulnerable with us and said, I love the artwork, but I hate thinking about where it comes from. And so, we talked about that in the group and it was even hard for us because we recognized that there’s so much inherent trauma in this topic and trying to figure out at the museum how to walk that line between education, but also being sensitive and not wanting to re-traumatize people.
This is such a heavy topic, so how do you do that? We were, again, so grateful to all of these students for coming and working with us and just being so candid and so vulnerable and sharing their hearts with us. So, we asked them, “Okay, so we’re hearing from you, gosh, this can be traumatic. What else would you like to see in here? You know, when we do this larger exhibit, what’s something that would help these feelings?”
And they shared, you know, “We would really love to see some success stories. We would really love to see the history of an artist who maybe yes, was incarcerated for a bit, but now they’re out and they’re thriving and they’re actually okay, and they’re not one of the millions of people that falls to recidivism. Like they’re succeeding and they’re in their community.”
And so that was like that was a really momentous moment for us. And so, wanting to incorporate, yeah, some of those success stories and just really have a focus in the exhibit on advocacy, restorative justice, rehabilitation, looking at what’s next for some of these artists who, they were incarcerated, but they’re out and they’re rebuilding their lives, and what does that look like?
[00:24:10] Emily: And as you know, in the spring issue of El Palacio, Jimmy Santiago Baca wrote an ode to prison art. So, he’s perhaps an example of one of these artists who have gone on to have what might be considered a success story. I note also that you are working with two, at least two individuals, right, who are helping put this exhibition together who are formerly incarcerated.
[00:24:34] Patricia: Yeah. Uh, John Paul Granillo, who was incarcerated in a federal prison. A local youth artist. He was part of the dialogues with the youth from YouthWorks. He is a lead over at YouthWorks and JP is just an amazing individual. He’s a father, he’s a husband, he’s an educator. He has a story that is inspiring, and he is also very compassionate.
Having been formerly incarcerated, he has an understanding and empathy for the struggles that youth might have, and he has helped save many lives. JP has been a consultant to the museum, a collaborator. He’s been a contributing artist and we’re very grateful for his participation and all the time and corazón that he puts into everything that he does and has contributed.
[00:25:35] Chloe: Another artist that we’ve had the privilege to get to know and work with over a number of years now is Carlos Cervantes. And he’s from Santa Fe. His family has been in Santa Fe for generations. He talks about when he was growing up, how St. Francis was a dirt road—so old school Santa Fe, and this gentleman was imprisoned in his early twenties.
His story is one of the stories of systemic and racial oppression in this country. He was part of the Chicano movement and he was a community organizer and he was just such a benevolent force doing good in the Santa Fe community. And he had a minor drug charge and was assigned, I think 138 years in prison.
Emily: Wow.
Chloe: For minor possession.
Emily: Mm-Hmm.
[00:26:21] Chloe: So then, he’s incarcerated because of something minor. He’s this incredible artist and spirit, and he was actually incarcerated during the infamous 1980 Prison Riot, and he ended up saving the life of two prison guards.
Emily: Oh, wow.
Chloe: During that riot.
Emily: Wow.
[00:26:39] Chloe: And it took, this is how long everything in the prison system takes. It took a number of years, but because of that, because he helped save the life of two prison guards, his sentence got commuted. And so eventually he was released and he was pardoned. He’s still on parole again. It took years to get him out, but he was released and now he’s home and we’ve been working with him for a number of years and he has the biggest heart.
And he, just, like JP, he’s done public mural projects with youth. He’s done a lot of work around his land, around the city, just painting murals and sometimes painting murals about his time in prison. About that story, but you know, in those, there’s the breaking of handcuffs. There’s the breaking of chains, there’s golden eagles, there’s birds.
And so, despite the hand that he was dealt, he continues to be an optimistic and just giving and hopeful individual who’s continually trying to inspire youth in the community. We have a little film in the exhibit where he shares some of his story. Also, we have this incredible frame, it’s a three window frame made of camel cigarette packs that he made while he was incarcerated, so that’s gonna be featured in the exhibit.
And we also filmed him essentially doing a demonstration of this paper folding technique. And it’s just incredible. So, we’ll, yeah, we’ll have a demonstration of Carlos doing the paper folding technique or actually working with John Paul Granillo. JP, he’s going to build a handmade tattoo gun.
Emily: Okay.
[00:28:14] Chloe: It’s not made yet, so we’re gonna film it and then have like the how to video in the exhibit, but we’re really excited to see how he does that.
We’re also working with another local artist, Candace Martinez, who’s also gonna make a tattoo gun. So, JP is gonna make it from materials that he would’ve had available to him in the men’s pod and Candace, the materials that would’ve been available to her in the women’s pod.
[00:28:34] Emily: Wow. So, what is the difference between the materials that the women and the men had?
[00:28:39] Chloe: We’ll find out, I think, I think JP might use a razor.
Emily: Okay.
Chloe: And Candace, I’m not sure.
[00:28:46] Patricia: Carlos Cervantes also made a tattoo gun while he was incarcerated, and he brought that out in 1984 when he was granted clemency and he started a barrio ink tattoo business here in Santa Fe. So, he showed it to me, and it’s made out of an ink pen and either a guitar string or a paperclip. This really dates him—a cassette tape like motor that’s rigged up to some electrical cord that plugs in and like cotton surgical tape to keep it all together. And so, he’s lending that to the exhibit.
Emily: Oh, cool, cool.
[00:29:25] Chloe: It’s so neat when he was doing the paper folding demonstration, towards the end of making the frame. He would also use cellophane from cigarette packs to give the frames a shine.
But then using the cellophane and putting, there were often multi-layers of the frame that needed to be sewn together. I’m like, “Well, Carlos, did you have a needle? What?” And so while we’re filming, he like gets up from the filming and finds a magazine and we’re like, “What are you doing?” Like just, just watching him and he tears open the magazine and pulls out a staple.
And so he very carefully bends the staple, holds it up and says, “This was our needle.” And then he explained that he would unravel bedsheets or a pillowcase, and that would be the thread. But again, it’s the ingenuity, the engineering. That’s some of the media that we’re gonna have in the exhibit is seeing artists, their faces, their voices, their hands, creating these incredible works.
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[00:30:22] Emily: So, what besides, you know, tattoo guns and paños. And it sounds like there’s some paper folding things, what other types of pieces are gonna be in this exhibition?
[00:30:51] Patricia: We have mail correspondence, snail mail, essentially, that have beautifully drawn images of nature, of animals that were mailed out and saved by individuals that are lending them or donating them to the museum eventually.We also have some sculptures, paintings,
[00:31:15] Chloe: toilet papier-mâché.
Patricia: Yes.
Chloe: And so, we have many little figurines, animals, dogs, cats, leopards. We have a few eagles. One is very large and these pieces are incredible. So, the eagles are a blend of toilet papier-mâché and paper folding. And they were created in 1994 in a prison in York, Pennsylvania.
I don’t have the artist’s names with me, but these works were done by artists who would be Chinese immigrants who came across on the ship, the Golden Venture. And the ship ran aground on the East Coast in 1993, and a number of the passengers were imprisoned. And they happened to be sent to a prison in York, Pennsylvania, and many of them were imprisoned for almost four years and you know, like what’s more American than a bald eagle?
And so, we have a number of these eagles. One of them is almost three feet tall. And that was made by one of these passengers of the Golden Venture. And a lot of them had pro bono lawyers in Pennsylvania that were helping them. And so sometimes they would make these works as gifts as thank yous. So, the people were trying to help them get out and get citizenship.
[00:32:30] Emily: Where did you acquire these pieces from and is it the country? Is it internationally?
[00:32:35] Patricia: The museum had a collection already started, and we have pieces in the exhibition that are international and some of the more recently acquired pieces have come through word of mouth, and we recently just brought in a couple pieces that were from a Japanese internment camp,
[00:32:57] Chloe: Some of the artworks came to us from individual connections between either the artist or the artist and a friend who then donated or loaned it to the museum. Um, but we have a lot of works from prison art sales, and also prison art stores—which exist both in the United States and internationally.
So, for example, a local donor gave us these two incredible wooden storyboard carvings from a prison in Palau. And we have pieces from, yeah, prison art stores in Mexico, Central and South America.
That’s another topic that the exhibit is going to explore is you know, what are these prison art stores? Are they really helping the artists? Is it exploitation? Just all of the intricacies of essentially the creating and then the selling of prison art. So, there’s a lot of questions there.
[slow soft music]
[00:33:54] Emily: So, it sounds like there are gonna be lots of different types of visitors, people who are impacted by this directly, and their families perhaps, and then maybe people who are very new to this topic. What do you hope people take away from it, from these various audiences?
[00:34:09] Patricia: Many things, but we really want them to just appreciate and recognize the creativity ingenuity, just as they would going into another gallery, anywhere in the world to see art, to not judge the maker because he has a number.
We are really seeking to identify as many artists as we can to really identify that the human spirit, the creative, no matter what adversity or trials and tribulations or for that matter, the crime, not to judge this person based on that, but to have just hope and faith in rehabilitation that that can happen and that this creative process is an important part of that rehabilitation.
We want them to also participate in the conversation with themselves. That inner voice, that could be me at any moment. Something could happen and it could change our lives.
We will have a dialogue lounge where we hope visitors will take some time to sit with their family, to reflect, to write. We’ll have a reading area because there’s a number of publications and children’s books. We’ll have interactive areas where visitors can make something with their hands and participate in that creative process.
It’s also a way for an individual, a visitor, to walk in and feel the full spectrum as much as we can in the gallery space. How big mass incarceration is and what are some of the effects, the impact of mass incarceration and what is happening to help combat that and make changes.
[soft music]
[00:36:05] Chloe: If a visitor has been affected by mass incarceration, and so many people have, I mean unfortunately that’s part of the story of the United States at least.
You know, if they have been affected, that they’re not alone and that they are seen their story, seen, their loved one is seen, their family is seen, and that there are a lot of advocacy organizations, artists, just people who care, who are trying to make things better.
We’re showing artworks made by artists who happen to be incarcerated. Yes, it’s prison art, but these are artists and they’re people.
[00:36:53] Emily: Between the Lines: Prison Art and Advocacy at the Museum of International Folk Art opens on August 9th, 2024, and runs through April 20th, 2025. Be sure to mark your calendars to see the incredible art we discussed. Visit moifa.org to learn more and check out our show notes for links to some of the arts organizations mentioned in this episode that are working with community youth.
[music fades into theme music and closing credits]
[00:46:09] Emily: Encounter Culture is a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs.
Our producer is Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.
Season six is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder and Alex Riegler with additional editing by Monica Braine.
Our recording engineer is Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe.
Technical direction and post-production audio by Edwin R. Ruiz.
Our executive producer is Daniel Zillmann.
Thank you to New Mexico artist “El Brujo” D’Santi Nava for our theme music.
For a full transcript and show notes, visit podcast.nmculture.org or click the link in the episode description in your listening app.
I’m your host, Emily Withnall.
The New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs is your guide to the state’s entire family of museums, historic sites, and cultural institutions. From native treasures to space exploration, world-class folk art to ancient dinosaurs. Our favorite way to fully explore is with the New Mexico CulturePass. To see everywhere CulturePass is accepted and reserve yours today, visit newmexicoculture.org/visit/culturepass
Find inspiration from the rich folk art traditions from across the world at the Museum of International Folk Art. Visit moifa.org for tickets, events, and more.
And if you love New Mexico, you’ll love El Palacio magazine. Subscribe at elpalacio.org.
Thank you for listening, and if you learned something new, send this episode to a friend or share it on social media. We love celebrating the cultures of New Mexico together.
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