Prisoners’ Justice and Support
1. Photos taken between 2014-2018 in and around Ontario Federal Penitentiaries, along with accompanying artwork. This series looks at the unseen human landscape of the prison setting- where ominous architecture is broken by light, helping to dissolve the walls imagining the children, parents, partners, caregivers, within.
2. Prisoners’ Justice Day T-shirt printing between 2017-2024
3. This Prisoners’ Justice Day Exhibition was mounted at 163 Queen East in partnership with Native Arts Society and Ubuntu Black Trans Collective during August of 2024. Using the textile work of Faith Ringgold as a template, a group of more than 50 Migrants from around the world painted the pattern and put words to their experience of ‘prison’- from migrant detention, to borders, to rising social exclusion and isolation. These quilts were coupled with works by former Federal Prisoner and leathercrafter Brian Hickey, Chelston Nichols, currently incarcerated Inuk activist and artist Kevin Harper, and poetry by Tru Stewart. The works sought to interrogate the growing prison industrial complex, and its use of a global colonial system of displacement to create a prison without walls.
4. Working with one of the longest serving Canadian Prisoners, Greg McMaster, we used archival photography he collected across his journey in Federal prisons, to animate intimate lectures about his experience, building Prisoner justice advocacy, and offering insight to legal, health and social practitioners on the need for their support in Prisoner health and rights reform. These presentations were keynotes at Dala Lana School for Public Health annual conference in 2018, and Osgoode Hall Students association Conference in 2019, and were shown in many other venues. This marked the first time that a Federal serving Prisoner was able present digitally at a conference or meeting, changing the rules on technology for greater community participation and connection for Prisoners in Canada
5. In collaboration artists and Federal Prisoners Jeremy Hall, Tim Felfoldi and Gregory McMaster, these articles were published in TTTism Magazine, offering a contemporary look at tattooing in Canadian Prison, highlighting the art, the life and struggles for justice that these incarcerated artists endure to produce their work. Text by artist and modern tattooer, Sally.
6. Pamphlets and guides supporting popular education and better resources for Prisoners in Federal incarceration made in partnership with Prisoners’ HIV/AIDS Support Action Network and Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange.