Jesse Krimes is a Philadelphia-based artist whose work explores how contemporary media shapes or reinforces societal mechanisms of power and control. While serving a six-year prison sentence, he produced numerous bodies of work, established prison art programs, and worked collaboratively with his peers. After Krimes’s release in 2014, he co-founded Right of Return USA in partnership with the Soze agency, the first national fellowship dedicated to supporting formerly incarcerated artists. He has received public commissions from Amnesty International, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and Eastern State Penitentiary. Krimes was awarded fellowships from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation “Artist as Activist,” the Independence Foundation, and the Art For Justice Fund.

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Russell Craig & Jesse Krimes

Rendering Justice: Repairing the Social Fabric

Participatory Workshop and Ongoing Interactive Table

Workshop: Friday, February 28 from 11:00 am - 12:00pm: Democracy Lab, Japanese American National Museum 

Table: Friday and Saturday, MOCA Plaza; Sunday, Hammer Museum, Nimoy Studio

 

Artists Jesse Krimes and Russell Craig will facilitate Rendering Justice: Repairing the Social Fabric, a participatory workshop exploring conceptions of safety and justice. The workshop will focus on critically examining the current reality of the U.S. justice system and on reframing the public narratives that perpetuate mass incarceration. Collectively, participants will render visible a shared vision for building a safer and more just society through conversation and quiltmaking. Participants will illustrate a quilt square using imagery that visually represents their conceptions of safety and justice and will be encouraged to add their own creative interpretations but asked to refrain from using text. Krimes and Craig will draw upon their personal experiences of navigating the criminal justice system to facilitate discussion about the images and the relationship between participants’ conceptions of safety, justice, and systemic reform of the criminal justice system. For both Los Angeles and the nation, Rendering Justice affirms a vital truth: mass incarceration is close to every American community—and we all have a stake in reversing it and a responsibility to envision alternatives to incarceration.