Visualizing Abolition presents "Abolition from the Inside Out," featuring jackie sumell, Albert Woodfox, and Tim Young. Together, they will discuss the activism and collaborations taking place between people inside and outside of prisons to, as sumell puts it, "imagine a landscape without prisons."
This event is co-presented by the Institute of the Arts and Sciences and the Legal Studies Program at UC Santa Cruz.
FREE and open to the public
Register here
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About the Speakers
Award-winning artist jackie sumell works collaboratively with people incarcerated across the U.S. to promote abolition.
Albert Woodfox is an activist and author who spent decades in solitary confinement at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. .
Tim Young is a poet and activist currently on San Quentin's Death Row and sumell's collaborator on UC Santa Cruz's Solitary Garden.
About the Series
Visualizing Abolition is a series of online events organized by Dr. Rachel Nelson, director of the Institute of the Arts and Sciences, and Gina Dent, associate professor of feminist studies. The events feature artists, activists, and scholars united by their commitment to the vital struggle for prison abolition. Originally, Visualizing Abolition was being planned as an in-person symposium. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the panels, artist talks, film screenings, and other events will instead take place online. The events accompany Barring Freedom, an exhibition of contemporary art on view at San José Museum of Art October 30, 2020–April 25, 2021. To accompany the exhibition, Solitary Garden, a public art project about mass incarceration and solitary confinement is on view at UC Santa Cruz.
Visualizing Abolition is organized by UC Santa Cruz Institute of the Arts and Sciences in collaboration with San José Museum of Art and Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery. The series has been generously funded by the Nion McEvoy Family Trust, Ford Foundation, Future Justice Fund, Wanda Kownacki, Peter Coha, James L. Gunderson, Rowland and Pat Rebele, Porter College, UCSC Foundation, and annual donors to the Institute of the Arts and Sciences.
Partners include: Howard University School of Law, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, Jessica Silverman Gallery, Indexical, The Humanities Institute, University Library, University Relations, Institute for Social Transformation, Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, Porter College, the Center for Cultural Studies, the Center for Creative Ecologies, and Media and Society, Kresge College.