Year completed 2009 Medium Video/Audio/Animation Dimensions 11:30 Projected or Large Monitor
Art can tell stories. For years I would talk about injustice by reciting numbers and statistics. When you say, “We have over 2.3 million people in prison,” it’s a large number to comprehend. Doing research at a prison issues-themed residency at the Blue Mountain Center in New York, I found some maps that I felt could help tell the story. This project shows the proliferation of the US prison system if seen from a celestial point of view. Using different colors to indicate different eras, the viewer can clearly see the astonishing growth of this system over time.
Timeline:
Green Dots: 1778-1900
Yellow Dots: 1901-1940
Orange Dots: 1941-1980
Red Dots: 1981-2005