This painting was originally commissioned for this Zocalo Square publication, in association with Banned Book Week, 2023. Since then it has traveled to Australia as part of the Paperchained International exhibition, and was used on the cover of Issue 15 Paperchained magazine.
I am exceedingly grateful for the opportunity to create a piece of art that speaks to an issue so personal, and so near to my heart. As someone who's been incarcerated now, going on thirty years, I've experienced firsthand the crushing weight of being denied access to the information contained within particular books. To look forward to teaching yourself something through the power of the written word. Only to have that hope dashed by petty policies that are effective only at preventing self educating from within prison institutions.
I've dealt with this issue many times myself. The most recent being, as a member of The Empowerment Avenue Community I was blessed with subscriptions to two art magazines. The first, Apollo, I received without delay. The second, BAM! Black Art Magazine) was denied because even though it was purchased through Amazon, it was shipped from "a third party" publisher. Being a Black man who's an artist myself, I'm sure you can understand why I'd want to venture past the cover of that particular magazine.
Sure, "BAM" is not an educational book on its surface, (though I could make a strong case otherwise) each time this happens it reminds me of something I once read. A slave master becoming aware that his wife had been teaching his young slave Frederick Douglass how to read, he quickly put a stop to it! He admonished his wife saying, "if you teach... him to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave." Hearing what was said to the mistress of the house, young Douglass understood that education was his path to freedom.
Causes one to ponder, is there some other agenda behind the denial of (EDUCATIONAL) reading material? Perhaps, these materials could make us, "unfit" to be... convicts.
— Alvin Smith
