Feature image: M. Winston, House with oatmeal carton roof
Gary John Gresl
The traveling exhibition titled “Art Against the Odds” is extraordinary in several ways. The roots of the exhibition began in 2021 and took 2 years to organize and plan. It exclusively includes art made by incarcerated men and women in the Wisconsin Prison System. It has art of varied nature; fascinating, unique, naïve, and sophisticated. The art has moved viewers to tears and elevated many a Human Spirit to better understand thousands of our incarcerated brothers and sisters, with whom we join in Humanity’s creativity. It is likely the most “meaningful” exhibit this state has seen in decades. It has won the 2023 Wisconsin Visual Art Achievement Exhibition Award.
This show was curated by the Portrait Society Gallery, Historic Third Ward, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the heart of it are Debra Brehmer and Paul Salseider. Brehmer, a prominent part of Wisconsin’s art community for many decades, is the owner of PSG, a curator of exhibits in many professional venues, an originator of the publication, “Art Muscle”, and a national arts writer for Hyperallergic. Salseider, Manager, and co-curator of “Art Against the Odds”, plays a central role in the planning, installation and achievements of this significant show.
I cannot speak of the nature and importance of this exhibit any better than Brehmer who wrote the Preface to the catalog for the show. Because she speaks with perfection, I have asked permission to repeat her Preface:
“Art Against the Odds: Wisconsin Prison Art” defines art making as not only a creative pastime but a life-saving tool of self-definition for those who are removed from society. The work on view counters assumptions… This is not to deny the pain inflicted by crime, nor the lingering impact on victims, but to privilege redemption and the potential expansiveness of the human spirit. This provides space for hope. Without hope, there is no humanity.
The artwork presented here has emerged from the most inhospitable conditions, and yet the drive toward invention and creativity has won out over despair. The artists in Art Against the Odds share their work with pride. Lacking opportunities to be seen in a context beyond their criminal records, art affords a different visibility. It is a means to expressively render a self that is complex, often conflicted, and fully human.
As the world changes, art institutions, artists, and curators are called upon to expand perspectives, acting as agents to move across social divides and use their skills to explore the less examined underpinnings of our social construct. {This exhibit} steps into the vast carceral network – the prisons, the individuals and the effects of poverty and trauma – through the window of art. This project maintains that art, freedom, and justice go hand in hand. Art is a means of empathy. Art is a way forward. Art is a tool for structural change.”
40 inches.
Visit www.artagainsttheodds.com to learn more and connect on Instagram at @portraitsocietygallery.