CULTURAL PROJECTS

Projects developed by PNAP members inside and outside the prison are designed to engage issues and bring forward the questions and visions of the students in our classes. Over the years, PNAP members have developed projects specific to classes as well as created themes that are discussed and developed in many classes, over several semesters. Projects materialize as videos, installation, works on paper, performances and texts. Content for projects is often developed across a range of communities: artists in the prison, poets in Chicago, students in university classes, community partners. PNAP members collaboratively have authored books, created public artworks, produced touring exhibitions, and more. PNAP projects have been used in k-12 and university classrooms, projected on prison walls, and performed in parks and in Stateville prison.

Carving Out Rights from Inside the Prison Industrial Complex

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…

The 51st (Free) State

This project materializes movements, sounds, and songs that connect thousands of incarcerated people through a body of work for an imagined 51st free state.

The Long Term

A series of thematic works around long-term sentencing policies and the other long terms they produce.

Contingent Citizen

This project examines the concept of the “citizen” as a framework that functions to both grant rights and exclude them.

It’s Now

It’s Now is a public art mural project designed by artists at Stateville and artist Aaron Hughes and painted by community members.

Letters from the Future

Letters from the Future was a project developed in 2016 that asked artists to imagine life in 2045.

Representations

In 2014-2015 artists at Stateville created two bodies of works that considered self-representation.

One Day a Week

One Day a week is a 30 minute video of interviews with artists, writers and scholars who work with PNAP.

Bookmarks

This project is a set of oversized bookmarks that display lists of people wanted to read based on a 2015 course, titled Freedom Dreams.

Freedom Dreams

Freedom Dreams is a 2015 collaboration between PNAP and the Social Justice Initiative at UIC that makes connections between artists in and outside of prison.

About Time

Between 2013-2014 PNAP worked with 11 artists at Stateville on a year long project around the ideas of time, play and freedom.

Writing & Spoken Word

Self-published anthologies of student writing and recordings of poetry from select PNAP courses and exhibitions.