BACKGROUND

In 2016 The Confined Arts (TCA) launched a three-month long exhibition project entitled VISIONS OF CONFINEMENT: A LENS ON WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES PRISON SYSTEM, at the Hunter College East Harlem Gallery with Curator Arden Sherman. This visual arts project explored the nuances of incarceration for women in America. As part of the exhibition, the East Harlem Gallery was turned into an “educational lounge” for the summer, and featured: a dialogue wall, artwork, a letter writing station, a listening station, a lounge area, and a small library inside the gallery space–all of which addressed artistic meditations on how women experience living in confined spaces, life after release, and family interactions. The exhibit functioned as an educational laboratory and flex space inside the gallery, and fostered conversations around female incarceration. The exhibition project highlighted the struggles faced by incarcerated women at a time when the criminal justice system is in crisis and in dire need of reform.
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INITIATIVE SCOPE

Today, The Confined Arts is partnering with local and national Artists, Social Justice Organizers, and Organizations, to evolve Visions of Confinement (VOC) into an ongoing Arts-driven women’s wellness initiative that uses policy-based art practices as tools for healing and advocacy. TCA believes that all members of society are affected by and complicit in creating and sustaining issues that impact women. Therefore, it is important for men to understand more fully the many challenges facing women, especially women of color. Advocacy around issues facing women is typically limited to women advocating for women. Historical movements have proven that, bringing to bear as many diverse perspectives as possible to solve intersectional issues will facilitate stronger social relationships between genders and races, and help bring empathy, understanding, and collaborative advocacy to issues facing women, especially women of color. Through arts and activism centered fellowships, leadership trainings, focus groups, and other public programming, the VOC initiative will facilitate spaces to create men and women leaders who will advocate for women’s rights via policy and the arts, and foster leadership, mentorship, and social support for women in Black and Hispanic communities.

The Visions of Confinement Initiative has a two-part mission:
  1. Build multifaceted advocacy network that centers the experience of women’s issues by training leaders of all genders, who will TOGETHER, advocate for women’s rights via policy and the arts. 
  2. Target the ways in which misogyny and stigma socially impacts the lives of women of color by proposing more art-centered healing and empowerment spaces for women, especially women of color.

how we do it