NC man curates exhibit featuring incarcerated artists — while incarcerated himself | Opinion

Watching President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 gave Caddell Kivett an idea: to create an art exhibit in the nation’s capital featuring works by incarcerated artists, all centered around criminal justice.

But there was one catch: he would have to organize it all while being incarcerated himself.

Three years later, that improbable idea is a reality.

Now on display at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C., Prison Reimagined: Presidential Portrait Project is a collection of visual and written works that shed light on mass incarceration in the United States. As the name suggests, many of the works are presidential portraits that reflect each president’s record on incarceration and criminal justice.

“I knew this could be a powerful vehicle to give voice to the often unseen and unheard people at ground zero of mass incarceration in America,” Kivett wrote in a letter to The News & Observer.

For Kivett, Biden’s inauguration was a source of hope — hope that Biden would use his presidency to undo the ways he had contributed to mass incarceration in America. Several of the works in the exhibit reference this legacy; the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act bill that Biden authored as a senator in 1994 is widely viewed as legislation that accelerated mass incarceration by creating mandatory minimum sentences and incentivizing states to build more prisons.

Kivett is currently incarcerated at Nash Correctional Institution, about an hour northeast of Raleigh, serving a lengthy sentence for assault and other charges. He and his peers at Nash Correctional, in partnership with Justice Arts Coalition, teamed up to make the project a reality. They founded the Committee for Incarcerated Artists and Writers, which selected works submitted by incarcerated men and women across the country to showcase in the exhibit. Sixteen states are represented in the show, Kivett said.

It took years to come to fruition. COVID, plus the obvious hurdles of organizing such a project from prison, made it difficult. They used tablets installed with messaging apps to communicate with one another, while Justice Arts Coalition helped coordinate from the “outside.”

“Logistically, it was a considerable task,” Kivett said.

To Kivett, the exhibit is social and political commentary at its best. Though conversations about mass incarceration and criminal justice reform have become common in American politics, rarely do they feature the perspectives of those who have been incarcerated themselves.

“I saw this as a vehicle to harness the art and writing of incarcerated people to make a political statement,” Kivett told me. “Politicians, all the legislators, academics, advocates, family members, they’re out there having the conversation, but the people at ground zero aren’t always involved.”

One set of canvases illustrates the school-to-prison pipeline accelerated by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. A pen and ink drawing references Richard Nixon and the War on Drugs. Another charcoal portrait, drawn by another North Carolina prisoner, is a portrait of President Donald Trump with the word “JUSTICE?” in orange letters across the top.

One piece, a six-paneled portrait of President Barack Obama, was created by three men on federal death row. Being in solitary confinement, they had to slide the canvases under the door of their respective cells so that a janitor could take it to the next man’s cell. One of the artists, at the time the only Native American on federal death row, was executed in 2020 during the Trump presidency.

Kivett says this portrait is especially important to him, because it represents the hope that the death penalty will one day be abolished in America. Unfortunately, that day has not yet come — Alabama executed someone on death row just this week, the nation’s first known execution using nitrogen gas.

Kivett’s hope is that the exhibit will get people to think critically about mass incarceration and its roots in American society. The number of incarcerated Americans has grown 500% in the past 40 years, and the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world.

“I hope they leave with an understanding that continuing to cage people in America as a response to harm and violent crime is not making us safer or better as a nation,” Kivett told me. “Victims of crime deserve redress and people who commit crimes should be held responsible, but we need to find a better way.”