Photo By Gail

To counter the dehumanizing isolation of incarceration, artist Jesse Krimes (b, 1982) works collaboratively with incarcerated individuals to create artworks from old clothing and textiles that evoke memories of home. Krimes developed his own practice while serving  a six-year sentence. In Blackwater (2021), Krimes regards the tentacled animal as “a panoptic  state of surveillance” and alludes to the eugenic and white supremacist ideas in America zoology. The title, Blackwater, refers to a prison in Florida.

Photographed in the Brooklyn Museum.