“It is in your hands,” 2022 Gaffer Glass
glasswork created at Penland. Special thanks to Nick Fruin, Leslie Noell, Ché Rhodes, and Hayden Wilson.
Innocence is at the core of my own identity and artistic practice. Working across many media and disciplines, my art addresses the concepts of innocence, identity, and community, by reimagining their social and political implications in the context of the American criminal justice system. My work also explores how society’s perception of identity and innocence can dictate our access to fundamental human rights. As an exoneree, my personal history is inextricably linked to the criminal justice system. My artistic practice is not only a way to share my experience of wrongful incarceration with others, but it also creates space for others to tell their stories, illuminating the invisible costs, damages, and burdens of incarceration.
Toni Morrison, in her acceptance speech for The Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, spoke of the capacity of language to both oppress and empower, as expressed in the parable of the bird in the hand. In Morrison’s telling, an old, blind woman is approached by children, who decide to play a trick on her. One of them says he has a bird in his hand and asks her to tell him if it is living or dead. The woman remains silent, then finally says: "I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands." Widely understood as a metaphor for language, Morrison’s words have led me to reflect on my own “bird in the hand,” the concept of innocence, and how I might be able to give visual and physical form to this abstract idea, so as to hold it in my own hands.