On Display: Wednesday, January 21 – March 13, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, February 6, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., in The Lindorf Family Foundation Lounge (right outside of the gallery).
In Imagining Abolition: State Blues, Returning Artists Guild (RAG) artists explore the lived realities, emotional labor, and visionary power involved in creating a future beyond punishment and incarceration. This exhibition is grounded in the belief that abolition is not about tearing down for the sake of destruction—it is about building something better. It is about first imagining and then practicing systems rooted in care, accountability, and real safety for all people.
The title speaks to this work made in confinement and in the illusion of freedom after confinement. For those impacted by incarceration, abolition is not an abstract ideal. It is deeply personal. It requires sacrifice, reflection, and relentless hope, it requires us to see beyond the funeral dirge, the state blues, and the tainted freedom to a world beyond the blocks: the free future.
Many of the works in this show are shaped by the passage of time—time lost, time stretched, time marked by creativity and resistance. Some pieces directly confront the violence and failures of the prison-industrial complex. Others focus on resilience, healing, and the quiet power of creative practice. Together, these artists ask:
- What does it mean to contribute when you’ve already given everything?
- How do we know when we’re doing the work, and when we’re burning out?
- How do we grieve and celebrate at once?
- What does a free future look like—and what does it take to get there?
This exhibition does not offer easy answers or singular narratives. Instead, it holds space for complexity, contradiction, and imagination. These artists are not calling for chaos—they are calling for transformation. They are inviting us to reimagine justice, safety, and community from the ground up.
Imagining Abolition: State Blues is not about erasing systems without a plan. It is about confronting harm, holding space for healing, and doing the hard, necessary work of dreaming a free future into existence.
—Aimee Wissman and Kamisha Thomas, Co-Founders RAG (Returning Artists Guild), 2025, The Returning Artists Guild [external link]
This exhibition is made possible by a Spark Grant from the Mellon Foundation and the Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project (OPEEP).
Photograph: Joy Hoop, "Worry Doll".
