September 11, 2022

ASU Art Museum Director Miki Garcia On Art's Power to Address Inherited Notions About Mass Incarceration, the Undoing Time Exhibition, and Justice As Public Love

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Cover photo of Miki Garcia by Alonso Parra.

Please visit the website for Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration at ASU's Art Museum and at Berkeley Art Museum to learn more.

1:30 ASU Art Museum’s mission as a learning institution that centers art and artists in the service of social good and community well-being

2:40 inspiration for Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration exhibition as a cultural mark in time for ASU Art Museum

6:40 effort to address all dimensions of an exhibition on mass incarceration and its impact on viewers

8:00 Art for Justice Fund’s involvement in exhibition

9:05 prior exhibition with artist Gregory Sale who worked with incarcerated populations

9:15 Contemporary Art Museum Houston and Nicole Fleetwood’s work with the Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the Justice System exhibition

10:20 Undoing Time’s focus began with a survey of how incarceration has been portrayed through images from the 18th Century Code of Hammurabi forward

11:30 12 artists invited to create commissions for Undoing Time, including Mario Ybarra, Jr. who created a pizza parlor vignette that dealt with Ybarra’s childhood friend Richard who later was incarcerated on a murder charge

13:20 rehabilitation was shown in Ybarra’s work that’s not shown in historical images of incarceration

13:55 Stephanie Syjuco’s commission abstracted images of black and brown incarcerated population

15:10 Juan Brenner’s commission about the Guatemalan Highlands and how the U.S. West Coast prison system gang culture was exported to Central America

16:10 destruction of Guatemalan Highlands’ residence due to erection of prison that houses Mara Salvatrucha gang

17:25 architecture of prisons, e.g, the panopticon, the fortress

18:00 Indigenous artists Raven Chacon and Cannupa Hanska Luger

19:15 Luger’s commission focus on the relationship of land to mass incarceration

19:25 Mass Liberation Arizona’s mission of people over property

21:00 Theater maker and Playwright Michael Rohd choreographed going through the exhibition

22:55 Raven Chacon’s musical composition about a juvenile detention center

24:10 Rohd’s positing of questions and cards for viewer feedback

26:45 Art for Justice Fund to ASU poet Natalie Diaz and the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands

30:00 undergoing critique of the purpose and operation of museums

33:30 museums are civic institutions of dialogue, engagement and storytelling and should be responsible to the communities they serve

35:30 art’s power to challenge inherited narratives about incarceration

37:15 how she sees her legacy to eliminate as many boundaries as possible and uphold all kinds of art forms and include more voices and to open up what a museum can be and who it’s actually for

39:20 evolution of her definition of justice

40:45 justice has to be fought for

40:55 justice as public love

Please share your comments and/or questions at [email protected]

Music by Toulme.

To hear more episodes, please visit Warfare of Art and Law podcast's website.

To leave questions or comments about this or other episodes of the podcast and/or for information about joining the 2ND Saturday discussion on art, culture and justice, please message me at [email protected].

Thanks so much for listening!

© Stephanie Drawdy [2025]

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By Stephanie Drawdy

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