On view from October 17-December 16, 2011
President’s Gallery
John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York in collaboration with Denise Bibro Fine Art and Amnesty International present Carol Jacobsen: Mistrial in the President’s Gallery. Co-Sponsored by Amnesty International, the exhibition encompasses a large-scale photography and video installation exploring issues of women’s criminalization.
The sense of temporality in the photographs is conveyed in the video installation through the spatial journey of the camera’s movement. The camera moves from the outside of a woman’s prison, and travels inward, first depicting the circles of razor wire surrounding the prison, and finally ending deep inside the darkest cells of the segregation unit. Narrated by women inmates, the video portrays an intimate and personal narrative, as well as a highly-charged political challenge to current punishment regimes.
Together, the images in the exhibition link the eras of the Wall Street crash, the Great Depression and the recent global economic crisis, conveying a resonant sense of timelessness.
Jacobsen’s work has been shown internationally, and has been co-sponsored by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. She has received awards from National Endowment for the Arts, Women in Film Foundation, Paul Robeson Foundation, and Art Matters. Jacobsen’s essays have appeared in Hastings Women’s Law Journal, New York Law Review, Signs Journal, and Art in America. A professor at the University of Michigan, she also directs Michigan Women’s Justice & Clemency Project, a grassroots effort for freedom, human rights, and civil rights for women prisoners. She is represented exclusively by Denise Bibro Fine Art.
Curated by Thalia Vrachopoulos