Weight(s), 2019
Knit drawstring bag, shoe strings, and North Carolina exoneree court dockets
The inspiration for Weight(s) came from the court dockets printed by Roland and his cellmate while studying cases they were able to print in the Law Library at the DC correctional facility in which they were incarcerated. These materials became so hefty that they turned them into weights for weightlifting.
Roland revisits this exercise here, stating: “Now the court dockets that fill the clothes bag are from other wrongfully incarcerated North Carolinians. I want the viewer to mull over the mental and emotional weight of this experience. How much does trauma weigh?
Six weights were made in 2019. Proposals have been developed to make 149 weights. The National Registry of Exonerations has only been able to track this data since 1989. I was exonerated in 2015, which was a record year with 149 exonerations.”