[Exhibition] Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration

Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration
August 27–December 18, 2022
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA)

Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration considers the foundational roots of confinement from philosophical, sociological, theological, and art historical perspectives to better understand the fact that today’s mass incarceration crisis has been centuries in the making. This exhibition traces images from history that contribute to the entrenched cultural beliefs associated with today’s carceral system. 

Undoing Time features newly commissioned works of contemporary art based on the analysis of art historical images of incarceration. The twelve contemporary artists in the exhibition—Carolina Aranibar-Fernández, Juan Brener, Raven Chacon, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Ashley Hunt, Sandra de la Loza, Michael Rohd, Paul Rucker, Xaviera Simmons, Stephanie Syjuco, Vincent Valdez, Mario Ybarra Jr.—invest in community collaboration, work in an expansive range of media, and rethink traditional archival research to consider how artistic expression reveals the underlying logics of criminality and correction.