Creativity Beyond the Barbed Wire: On Art Extraordinary and Artivism
Creating art can serve as a catalyst for personal transformation, or as a means for political voice, which is especially important when one is isolated from the outside world - or incarcerated. I have been thinking about this across the summer, intrigued by the intersection of personal and political elements when creating art inside of prison.
When I visited San Francisco in August, I saw a display from an artist called Orlando Smith. He is currently serving eight life sentences at the notorious San Quentin prison, but his talent was on display at the SF MOMA. Orlando Smith embodies art as political resistance and activism when he can only protest from within his cell. He describes himself as an artivist. His work takes a comic book style to offer political commentary as an inveterate critic of the US penal system. He was imprisoned under the draconian 3-strikes law that was established during the Clinton administration and chronicles the ‘senselessness’of the system he lives in (SF MOMA).
Smith’s artwork is intricate, immersive, complex, provocative, and painstakingly detailed, and the pages of comics often appear infested with virus cartoons lingering near speech bubbles, or oppressive grey cell bars that divide pieces of text. He frequently draws gravestones like political placards, and depicts scenes of protest. He draws aliens alongside politicians, emphasising the dizzying and confusing nature of the political scene, and specifically puts Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump on trial. His most notable piece is The Gruelling Report, which is a comic book column about the effects of COVID-19 on the ageing prison population.
Although an artivist at heart, he also refers to his practice as ‘cell therapy’ because creativity offers him a sense of freedom (Glasgow Live). This reminded me of another prominent creative figure within the penal system, drawing on the Scottish example of Joyce Laing’s work with HMP Barlinnie.
Born in Aberdeen and the founder of the Pittenweem Arts Festival, Joyce Laing was Scotland’s first art therapist, helping to rehabilitate some of the most violent inmates in Scotland. Her approach to the prison system was one of a therapeutic community model, encouraging inmates at Barlinnie prison to paint, sculpt, and write. She believed that each prisoner had a ‘well of creativity inside them’ to steer away from self-destructive habits (Glasgow Live).
Her civility and kindness towards prisoners was something for the Scottish penal system to learn from. Laing was a collector of "art extraordinary", as she described it, because she despised the term ‘outsider’ (The Guardian). Art extraordinary reminds me of artivism, where both concepts aim to shatter public perceptions of all inmates as monsters, and scrutinise the systems that set this up. Art extraordinary works under the logic that creativity can be found in anyone, and it should be honed.
The art that came out of the Barlinnie Special Unit (from 1973 to ‘94) has been described as a ‘mixed iconography of anguish, violence and contrition’ which strives not for aesthetic, but to create a raw account of the reality of prison (Art UK). Films like A Sense of Freedom and Silent Scream, several clay and stone sculptures, novels and paintings were the fruit of Joyce Laing’s therapeutic programme, and captured the attention of Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys.
The benefits of art therapy are evident in emotional healing, mitigating violence and reoffending, and ultimately fostering rehabilitation. Creativity often provides a remedy to restrictive thinking.
It is important that creativity breaches the barbed wire and enters the public domain. Curating and displaying artwork helps to legitimise and empower these people who are so often dehumanised by the media, or rendered invisible. People often forget that the imprisoned population doesn’t consist of a single undifferentiated whole, but each individual has their own circumstances and insight.
Laing curated a permanent display of work from HMP Barlinnie for Glasgow’s Kelvingrove art gallery, where she rescued pieces from bins and collected prison ephemera. Artwork from Barlinnie has also been exhibited during the Edinburgh International Festival. Orlando Smith’s work has been published internationally, from San Francisco and New York to the University of Derby.
Joyce Laing sadly passed away in 2022, but the legacies of art extraordinary remain today, and pieces are still displayed at Kelvingrove. The Barlinnie Special Unit shut down in 1994, with a journalist sighing that it was ‘so good they closed it down’ (Bella Caledonia). Orlando Smith is in his late fifties, and still ardently reports from within the criminal justice system.
Comments