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Featuring paintings, drawings, graffiti, and various
objects, some of which date back to the 1950s, “Bound & Gagged” is an
exploration of the artistic attempt to break out of the dark side, according to
Black Maria Gallery director Zara Zeitountsian. The Exhibition will comprise
graffiti created especially for the exhibition by a number of Los Angeles
artists, as well as ongoing screenings of a recent documentary on prison art.
The graffiti component of the exhibition is being organized in collaboration
with Gallery Crewest.“Imprisonment, whether actual or metaphorical, is
an
extreme experience that might push people to respond with a
radical alternative to their boundaries, by channeling the desire for freedom
into art,” Zeitountsian said. “What’s remarkable is that creative expression in
conditions of confinement is often tantamount to doing away with one’s
inhibitions, resulting in a heightened sense of liberation and release.”
While many of the artists participating in the upcoming
exhibition have never done time behind bars, some are former prisoners and one
is still incarcerated. In addition to new paintings and drawings, the featured
works include prison art, such as worry beads made of hardened bread and a
stone book, culled from the 1950s, 70s, and 80s.
“Art created out of a sense of imprisonment has a distinct
intensity and honesty to it,” Zeitountsian continued. “Such works do away with
the impulse to sanitize things; they’re gritty, unafraid to say it as it is.”
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