In “13th” I sought to tackle the issue of mass incarceration in America leading to overpopulating jails. Throughout America’s history, various laws and policies ranging from slavery, to Jim Crow, to the 13th amendment, have constantly adapted to keep minorities, especially people of color, disenfranchised. Humanity is lost on us as a population as we tend to look at each individual in the criminal system as just a number and fail to see a kindred soul.

In “13th” I attempted to create this concept by placing each distinct set of hands close to, and at times unrecognizable, to another set of hands. This forces the viewer to look closely to see the different hands, or souls, rather than one overcrowded piece as a whole that is mass incarceration.

As Michelle Alexander, author of the The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness writes, “Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the

meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.”

Dimension - 15”x 22”.

Edition of 30.

$300 – additional unframed copies ($100) available upon request.