Overview

PRISM: Seeing Beyond Mass Incarceration is an interdisciplinary initiative platforming art and justice as it examines the role of the library in efforts to end mass incarceration.

Cleveland Public Library (CPL) is facilitating the creation of public art and programming to further a more imaginative and expansive dialogue around the realities of mass incarceration, efforts to end this societal ill, and alternative solutions to safety.

This project brief accompanies an open call request for interested artists to submit qualifications to design and conceptualize public artworks to be sited at branches of Cleveland Public Library in the Fall of 2025.

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Cropped close-up from the PRISM design

open call request for qualifications from artists interested in
creating artworks for PRISM

Our Intent

INFORM

the public about mass incarceration

INCLUDE

impacted communities

IMAGINE

a world beyond carcerality

INSPIRE

new methods of seeing, speaking, & advocating for justice

IMPACT

shifts in Cleveland culture, conversation, systems, & spaces

“In public space, the presentation of those uncertain somethings (a sound, an image, a feeling) that comes almost from inside us is an invitation towards inclusion, towards access, and towards decentralized protection that puts maintenance above judgement, stewardship above punishment

(Chloë Bass, “Public art as an invitation towards abolition”)

Our Approach

A public artspace with art on walls and text explanations

Art

Development & presentation of artworks including:

  • Four public artworks sited at CPL branches
  • Commissioned work sited at CPL’s newly renovated Martin Luther King, Jr. branch
  • An art exhibition featuring 2D, 3D, & new media works
A few speakers on a stage for an unknown event

Programming

  • Diverse & robust opportunities for community engagement with artists, advocates, & authors
  • A symposium interrogating the role libraries play in addressing social challenges, upholding democracy, & innovating services as needs of patrons evolve
A bunch of people with peaceful protest signs in the street.

Advocacy

  • Center perspectives of people & communities most impacted by mass incarceration
  • Support & contribute to efforts to end the ills & impacts of mass incarceration in NE Ohio
  • Review internal policies, partnerships, & services to enhance CPL’s support offerings

Creative Direction & Themes

The project’s title, PRISM, is the primary theme and serves as a representational framework for the initiative’s aims. Participating artists are encouraged to develop concepts that guide viewers to consider mass incarceration through a lens in which a society without prisons is possible, plausible, and present.

About the Art

The PRISM graphic, conceptualized and designed by Katie St Surin, features a deconstructed anamorphic prism, typically used in photography and filmmaking. Anamorphic images must be viewed from a specific angle to reveal their true form.

Here, the prism encourages us to view mass incarceration through an alternative lens — considering that creative visioning and perspectives of lived experience are necessary to see and understand the true nature and cost of mass incarceration in ways that lead us to expand our collective imagination and create a world beyond carcerality.

A gradient graphic explaining the PRISM design elements such as Reflections, movements and spectrums of light

“One of the main ways art can disrupt the carceral imagination is by refuting the eugenic classification and fragmentation of people — desirable or deplorable, worthy or disgraced, precious or superfluous. Art can remind us who we are beyond the trappings of privilege or prison

(Ruha Benjamin, “Imagination: A Manifesto”)

About the Project Team

LAND studio and Shooting Without Bullets serve as consultants and co-project managers, shaping the project’s identity and processes in alignment with broader efforts encouraging the use of art for justice.

LAND Studio Logo

LAND Studio

LAND studio is a local nonprofit dedicated to creating and enhancing public spaces in Cleveland. For over 40 years, we’ve collaborated with artists, designers, and community partners to connect, inspire, and celebrate the city’s diverse culture through public art and civic projects.

Shooting Without Bullets Logo

Shooting Without Bullets

SWOB promotes the use of art + creative strategies as tools for social movement, utilizing a multidisciplinary model that moves art, artists and community through engagement with issues of justice.

Art For Justice Fund Logo

Art For Justice Fund

PRISM is made possible through funding from the Art for Justice Fund, via the Ford Foundation, the George Gund Foundation, and the Fowler Foundation.

Contact

For any questions or clarifications, please reach out to:

Tiffany Graham Charkosky (she/her)
Director of Arts & Culture
(216) 902-4903
Tiffany.charkosky@cpl.org