Here, we ask an artist to frame the essential details behind one of their latest works.

Bio: Jesse Krimes, 42, Pennsylvania and New York

Title of work: Stag

Where to see it: “Cells,” Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Three words to describe it: Social, fabric, cells.

What was on your mind at the time:  I was thinking about the Elegy Quilts I had been making previously and how people in prison were selecting animals as symbolic representations of themselves. In my search to find visual images of their respective animals, I kept coming across art historical depictions of animals being caged, controlled, or hunted. This made me reflect on the history of punitive ideologies and how they show up in the art historical canon. Simultaneously, I was also thinking about the prison as a microcosm of our increasingly globalized world that is shaped by myriad systems of capture, containment, and control. The fragmented ways in which we experience images, bodies, objects, and artworks are determined by what such systems conceal or reveal and ultimately shape what we view as valuable or disposable.

An interesting feature that’s not immediately noticeable: In Stag, like the rest of the works in exhibition, the piece features an animal hidden beneath the intricate layers of embroidery which are drawn directly from microscopic images of cancerous cells. Through my process of removing diseased cells from these images to reveal only healthy tissue, it allows me to make visible their defiant gazes emphasizing resilience and the possibility of transcendence. Additionally, among the textiles I use as my substrate are pieces of clothing and other textiles given to me by currently and formerly incarcerated, evoking the body and presence of the millions of people who have been “disappeared” by the carceral system.

How it reflects your practice as a whole: These new large-scale embroidered abstractions expand upon the work I was making during and after my incarceration and serve as tools for disentangling the complex value systems and hierarchies that shape how we see and understand information. I create work that explores media and social mechanisms of power and control, with a particular focus on criminal and racial justice. It is informed by more than eight years I spent in state and federal prisons, an experience that radically altered my perspective of society. 

My work frequently addresses the personal and societal impacts and context of mass incarceration, including the ways in which media representations of punitive ideologies undergird our notions of worth and disposability. The sociopolitical elements of my work often derive from materiality and aesthetic dimensions, where I utilize conventional aesthetic tropes of beauty—through exploration of form, color, texture, and process—to draw viewers into an intimate examination of more brutal, visceral or challenging content. I use visual language in this way to sensitive people to the cruelty of mass incarceration, and believe that perhaps the most powerful way to challenge the ethos of disposability underlying mass incarceration is to make the full humanity of incarcerated people and the broader systems that sustain it more visible to the public. My personal practice probes and reveals these systems, while the artistic organization I founded, The Center for Art & Advocacy seeks to create alternative structures that facilitate creativity and liberation.

One song that captures its essence: “Chimes of Freedom,” by Bob Dylan.