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Jared Scott Owens: Sepulture
NEW FOR 2017!
The artist draws from his personal experience to create a symbolic burial of an individual struggling with incarceration.
The prisoner’s Egyptian burial sarcophagus is covered with an American Flag, a reference to “how this man came to be buried,” according to Mr. Owens. The sarcophagus also incorporates the man’s belongings, the objects an incarcerated person might wish to bring from prison into the afterlife.
Eastern State receives arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Eastern State’s Halloween fundraiser, Terror Behind the Walls, provides additional support.
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Erik Ruin and Gelsey Bell: Hakim’s Tale
NEW FOR 2017!
The artist project a paper-cut silhouette of formerly incarcerated activist Hakim Ali onto a cell wall.
In the accompanying audio, Ali recounts his experience in solitary confinement. He describes the spiritual and psychological crisis, and later resilience, that is brought about.
Eastern State receives arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Eastern State’s Halloween fundraiser, Terror Behind the Walls, provides additional support.
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Piotr Szyhalski and Richard Shelton: Unconquerable Soul
NEW FOR 2017!
The artists combine drone footage with poems written and recorded by people living in prison.
The poems address the individual complexities, and shared universalities, of the prison experience.
Translations of the poems can be downloaded here.
Eastern State receives arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Eastern State’s Halloween fundraiser, Terror Behind the Walls, provides additional support.
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Luba Drozd: Institute of Corrections
This video installation utilizes source materials created for correctional employees that include conferences, training discussions, and simulated scenarios. The artist edits the footage to uncover the system behind incarceration and the dialogue that goes on internally within the field of corrections itself.
Meet the Artist
Luba Drozd is an interdisciplinary multimedia artist. She earned a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Bard College. Her films and installations articulate the absurd in the established exploitative social structures and demonstrate how the systems of control are manifested and echoed in restrictive architectural environments. Luba’s works screened at Smack Mellon, Apexart, Anthology Film Archives, the New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center and Art in General. She is a 2015 Media Arts fellow at BRIC in Brooklyn, NY.Artist installations are made possible in part by revenue from Eastern State’s Halloween fundraiser, Terror Behind the Walls.
Eastern State also receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
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Michelle Handelman: Beware the Lily Law
The piece uses the 1969 Stonewall Riots as a starting point to address issues facing gay and transgender inmates.
The riots began after a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. Police arrested men dressed as women and transgender patrons. Many of the patrons resisted the police raid, and the following day thousands of people marched in the streets, speaking out about unfair treatment under the law. It was the start of the modern gay rights movement.
Today, transgender female prisoners (male to female) are incarcerated in male prisons, and transgender male prisoners (female to male) are incarcerated in female prisons. They are often placed in “protective” or “administrative” custody. The resulting confinement, while safer for the inmates, is effectively a form of solitary confinement.
The artist has developed these monologues based on the experiences of real men and women.
Performers: Becca Blackwell, Michael Lynch
Cinematography: Ed David
Sound Design: Vincent Baker
Sound Mix: Dan Bora
Production Assistance: Nadja Marcin
“Spare Change for a Dying Queen” by Jimmy Camicia
Meet the Artist
Michelle Handelman’s video installations, live performances and photographs have been exhibited in galleries, museums, theaters and public spaces worldwide, including ICA, London; Pompidou Centre, Paris; American Film Institute; MIT List Visual Arts Center; Lincoln Center, Performa Biennial, SF MOMA and Arthouse at the Jones Center. Recent projects include Dorian, a cinematic perfume based on Oscar Wilde’s novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” which opened at Participant, Inc NYC (2009) and This Delicate Monster, a three-screen installation based on the poems “Les Fleurs du Mal” by Charles Baudelaire. Handelman is a Guggenheim fellow and has received numerous awards including grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Horizons Foundation and the Experimental Television Center. Her feature documentary BloodSisters, (1995) has just been re-released by the Tribeca Film Institute. Her fiction and critical writing appear in many publications including n. Paradoxa; A Feminist Journal; Inappropriate Behaviour (Serpents Tail, London 2001); Apocalypse Culture 2, (Feral House Press, LA 1992); and Herotica 3 edited by Susie Bright (Plume Books, SF 1994). Learn more about Michelle Handelman: www.michellehandelman.comPhotos: Laure Leber
Eastern State receives State arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Arts programming is also made possible with funding from Eastern State’s Halloween Fundraiser, Terror Behind the Walls.
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Tyler Held: Identity Control
Reflecting on the idea that a man is “too easily reduced to an object” when institutionalized, artist Tyler Held uses a car, stripped inside a cell, as a metaphor for relinquished individuality.
Meet the Artist
Visual artist Tyler Held’s body of work focuses on the processes of repair and modification. He exposes the renovation of a once discarded and common object by highlighting functional and aesthetic hybridity. His work challenges our cultural disdain for the obsolete. Held was born in Atlanta and currently works in Philadelphia.Artist installations are supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Arts programming is also made possible with funding from Eastern State’s Halloween fundraiser, Terror Behind the Walls.
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Alexa Hoyer: I Always Wanted to Go to Paris, France
Most of what the average person knows about prison life comes from pop culture: literature, history, news and most importantly from television and film. When visiting historic sites such as the Eastern State Penitentiary, one easily recognizes the visual landscape so often depicted in popular movies, as well as imagining the personal and private narratives dramatically rendered on screen. The prison film genre tends to glorify, romanticize or even trivialize the harsh realities of prison life. Even the more realistic depictions of imprisonment merely accentuate the difference between good and bad. After numerous heartbreaking struggles, the story inevitably ends with the release of the wrongly convicted. Goodness prevails over evil. An idealized version of events.
The piece challenges this notion of prison life. Three televisions are placed in three different locations at the Eastern State Penitentiary: a prisoner's cell, a hallway and a shower room. On each television excerpts from over seven decades of prison film history are screened. The excerpts are chosen to relate specifically to the setting in which the television is placed.
The title I always wanted to go to Paris, France is a quote taken from one of the film excerpts screened in the prisoner's cell. This yearning for another place and situation realized through cinema alludes to a sense of hopelessness and a desire for escape. Unlike the illusionary depiction of prison life apparent in pop culture and film, actual incarceration can only be entirely understood by those who have themselves lived through it.
Meet the Artist
Alexa Hoyer is a German artist who received an MFA in sculpture from the Tyler School of Art, where she was awarded a University Fellowship. She currently resides in New York City.Additional funding for this installation was provided by Temple University, Graduate School.
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Jesse Krimes: Apokaluptein16389067:II
The piece reflects the artist’s personal experience while incarcerated in federal prison, where he created a 39-panel surreal landscape on bed sheets and mailed each piece home. His installation at Eastern State will modify this massive image to cover the interior walls of an abandoned cell.
Meet the Artist
Philadelphia-based artist and returning citizen Jesse Krimes holds a BA in Studio Art from Millersville University. In 2009, he was indicted by the U.S. government on non-violent drug charges, labeled a "drug kingpin," and sentenced to a 70-month prison term. While incarcerated, he produced Apokaluptein:16389067, a vast multi-panel work, established prison art programs, and worked collaboratively with fellow inmates.Krimes’ work Purgatory, also created in prison, is included in the exhibition Le bord des mondes at Palais de Tokyo in Paris from February through May 2015. His visual poetry project, Apocrypha:16389067, realized in prison, is published in The New School’s MFA Creative Writing Program’s LIT Journal, October 2014.
Artist installations are made possible in part by revenue from Eastern State’s Halloween fundraiser, Terror Behind the Walls.
Eastern State also receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
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Jess Perlitz: Chorus
The artist asked incarcerated men and women from throughout the United States, “If you could sing one song, and have that song heard, what would it be?” Her recordings are played inside a cell at Eastern State. In the resulting “choir,” triggered by the visitor’s arrival, these voices are layered, escalating, colliding, and eventually grow overwhelming.
Meet the Artist
Jess Perlitz is a sculptor whose work functions like absurd weapons, considering the symbolic and cultivating engagement to think about voice and address hope. She received an MFA from Tyler School of Art, BA from Bard College and a bit of clown training from the Manitoulin Center for Creation and Performance. Jess has exhibited at venues such as Arlington Arts Center (Arlington, VA), Cue Arts Foundation (NY, NY), the Canadian Sculpture Centre (Toronto, Ontario) and ICA (Philadelphia, PA). She has been the recipient of awards that include the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Award and Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellowship, and has participated in residencies such as Key West Studios and the Arctic Circle Residency. Jess Perlitz was born in Toronto, Canada and currently lives is Portland, Oregon where she is an Assistant Professor of Art and the Head of Sculpture at Lewis & Clark College.Photo: courtesy of Jess Perlitz
Artist installations are made possible in part by revenue from Eastern State’s Halloween fundraiser, Terror Behind the Walls.
Eastern State also receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
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Ruth Scott Blackson: No Trace Without Resistance
The artist applies new paint chips, coated in gold leaf, to the flaking walls of an existing cell. In the resulting “shimmering constellation,” sunlight on the installation may entice the visitor in the same way an inmate may have been forced to concentrate on the walls during solitary confinement. The prison’s neglect reveals something surprising and rare underneath.
Meet the Artist
Ruth Scott Blackson is a visual artist based in Philadelphia, PA. Her art practice depicts accretions of time - transforming one pre-existing surface into another through repetitive marks of drawing and collage. She has lived and studied in the UK for most of her life, residencies and exhibitions have featured largely in the UK, France and Russia.In the spring of 2013 she was a recipient of the Hidden City Festival commission in collaboration with The Philadelphia Athenaeum. While in the latter part of 2013 she had her first solo show in Old City, Philadelphia. In 2009 her work was included in the Younger Than Jesus Artist Directory, New Museum, PHAIDON.
She relocated to Philadelphia, USA in 2011 and was a member of artist collective Grizzly Grizzly 2011-2014. She is currently an active member of Delaware Valley Chapter Guild of Bookworkers.
Artist installations are made possible in part by revenue from Eastern State’s Halloween fundraiser, Terror Behind the Walls.
Eastern State also receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
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