Rachel Zarrow March 17, 2021Updated: March 18, 2021, 1:07 pm
An adaption of artist jackie sumell’s “Solitary Gardens” at UC Santa Cruz. The garden plots are meant to represent a solitary confinement cell, taking up the same 6-by-9-foot space. The plants, which are selected remotely by an incarcerated person in solitary confinement, only grow in the spaces where humans would usually be able to walk in the cell. Photo: R.R. Jones
In the 2017 book “How To Do Politics With Art,” Lilian Mathieu describes how the arts play an important role in protest.
“It provides material and symbolic resources,” the French sociologist writes. Art “contributes to movement framing, mobilizes constituencies, sensitizes the broader public, and produces social change by renewing cultural traditions.”
Rachel Zarrow March 17, 2021Updated: March 18, 2021, 12:12 pm
“If The Leader Only Knew,” by Hank Willis Thomas, part of the exhibit “Barring Freedom” at the San Jose Museum of Art in San Jose. The exhibit focuses on pieces by 20 artists that makes viewers examine how they see and understand established notions of policing, incarceration, and surveillance. Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle
Rahsaan Thomas is a busy man. A writer, community organizer and co-host of “Ear Hustle,” a Pulitzer Prize- and Peabody Award-nominated podcast, he’s also the co-founder of Prison Renaissance, an organization that uses the arts to “end cycles of incarceration” and create connections between the general public and incarcerated people.