Wednesday 20 January 2010

Prison is a place





Prison is a place where you write letters and can´t think of anything to say.

Four years ago I found a webpage called “Friends behind the Wall” that offers data of American prisoners looking for contact with the outside world by mail. I started to correspond with 34 Afro-American prisoners from different prisons in the United States. Since then I’ve collected over 300letters, drawings and photo’s, turning it into an archive of intense emotions.

These letters are documents of the communication between the prisoners and me.

This communication often led to a playful exchange of items like photographs, poems, song texts and drawings. By sending and receiving personal information, which was sometimes honest and sometimes false, it soon developed into a natural and unplanned game based on each other’s reactions. Two years ago I won the Royal Academy Prize with this work and a nomination as emerging artists at the photo museum winterthur in switzerland.

the next few days i will post fragments of this work.!

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