A bold statement for those living within the industrial prison complex, realized in block prints of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Inside prisons across the U.S., incarcerated
people struggle everyday for their basic rights, claiming again and
again their status as human beings. Here, within the largest democracy
in the world (conditional though it may be), incarcerated people suffer
indignities from terrible living conditions to physical and sexual
violence, all under the aegis of justice.
As a tool to discuss the limits and ideals of
human rights within a carceral state, artists at Stateville Prison, who
struggle daily for their own human rights, created block prints of each
article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The process of
drawing, carving, and inking each print created the time and space for
artists to critique and reflect on the ways the declaration is
simultaneously aspirational, strategic, and fraught with the legacy of
the violence of its founding states. For universal human rights to be
relevant, it is essential that the most impacted people be heard and
their vision of human rights centered.
This book features the 30 brilliantly crafted
prints presented alongside the corresponding articles from the
declaration. The artists and authors ask essential questions of what it
means to build a culture of human rights from below rather than
institute rights from above. What happens when people denied their
rights, begin to reimagine and carve them out once again?
This project was inspired by Meredith Stern’s
Universal Declaration of Human Rights print project and developed in a
class taught by Aaron Hughes through the Prison + Neighborhood
Arts/Education Project.
