Empowering Voices,
One Exhibition at a Time

Curated from within prison, “The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison through Art” explored truths about women and incarceration. For this immersive multimedia exhibition, co-curators Tomiekia Johnson and Chantell-Jeannette Black, from Central California Women’s Facility, asked eight currently and formerly incarcerated artists to reflect on their relationship to their bed. For some it’s a place of safety and privacy, for others isolation and angst. Spanning murals, paintings, audio narratives, and an immersive prison room installation, the artworks and stories were varied—no two alike.

This exhibition, the first-ever co-curated show by someone inside prison in Berkeley Art Center's history, featured the work of eight currently and formerly incarcerated artists nationwide. The pieces explored the importance of staying connected to the larger community and challenged conventional notions of healing, unity, and transformation.

Empowerment Avenue hosted this solo exhibition in collaboration with Muse Gallery in Grand Rapids, Michigan—proximate to Alvin’s own community. His collection represents a struggle. It highlights the inner city plight of Black people. Inside a dilapidated classroom, along neighborhood sidewalks, in the midst of a church cookout or a liquor store parking lot, Alvin tries to lay bare the ugliness surrounding these underprivileged communities while recognizing and highlighting the joys that happen there too.

An exhibition of visual art and poetry, curated by Tomiekia Johnson and Chantell-Jeannette Black from within the Central California Women’s Facility at Chowchilla. Created in partnership with Flyaway Productions and Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD). The exhibition was one facet of Flyaway’s project If I Give You My Sorrows which explores women’s complex relationships to their beds.

She Told Me Save the Flower is an exhibit of words and art visioned by Corey Devon Arthur, an artist and writer currently incarcerated in New York State. Three of his art collections — titled Blood In My Eye, Save the Flower and Delicates — were displayed at My Gallery NYC, in Brooklyn, New York, during March of 2023. All of the work chronicles Corey’s feminist journey inside prison. The opening reception featured the screening of a short film co-produced by Corey, a poetry reading of Corey’s work as well as the work of incarcerated poet April Harris, and a call-in from Corey from prison. Corey, and all the currently- and formerly-incarcerated members of the Save the Flower team, were compensated. Proceeds from the artwork also went to Motherhood Beyond Bars and A Little Piece of Light.

In 2022 we participated in two art sales hosted by DreamCorps during their Annual Day of Empathy and Black Futures Weekend events, which featured four San Quentin artists and sold seven paintings.

In 2020, Rahsaan partnered with Flyaway Productions and the Museum of the African Diaspora(MoAD) to create a multi-faceted project that asked how Black and Jewish voices can amplify the call for racial justice via an end to mass incarceration—Meet Us Quickly With Your Mercy. As part of that project MoAD hosted an online exhibition titled Meet Us Quickly: Painting for Justice from Prison featuring the work of twelve currently and formerly incarcerated artists from San Quentin State Prison. We hosted an auction for the artwork and MoAD compensated every artist for their participation in the exhibition. That was followed up with an outdoor dance performance by Flyaway Productions at CounterPulse in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco and was coupled with an in-person Meet Us Quickly: Painting for Justice from Prison exhibition and artwork sale by the incarcerated artists. 85 percent of all proceeds went directly to the artists.