By Sydney Goitia-Doran, The Seattle Medium
Wa Na Wari, a Black arts organization in Seattle’s Central District, is centering the voices of incarcerated individuals in its latest exhibit. Running from June 6 to July 13, Voices From Inside showcases creative work from the Black Prisoners Caucus (BPC), an inmate-led group at Monroe Correctional Complex dedicated to education, empowerment, and advocacy for Black prisoners.
Inye Wokoma, co-director and co-founder of Wa Na Wari — which means “our home” in the Kalabari language — says that the exhibit grew out of relationships formed during workshops the organization led at Monroe Correctional Complex. Community organizers connected to the Black Prisoners Caucus invited Wa Na Wari to host the workshops, where connections with incarcerated artists naturally led to this collaboration.
Curated by Wa Na Wari co-founder Elisheba Johnson, Voices From Inside features writing, visual art, and film from more than eight incarcerated artists. Artists like Tonelli Anderson use beadwork as a form of expression, while others, like Antaeus Laurent Clark and Handellah write expressive poetry—all offering insight into life behind bars and the role of creativity in reclaiming voice.
One piece in the exhibit, How We Tell Stories to Children by Sable Elyse Smith, consists of fragmented audio and video clips compiled from footage her father sent her from prison. The work depicts his experiences and explores how incarcerated people communicate with the outside world. Visitors encounter the piece upstairs, where a small wooden bench faces a television screen playing scenes of a man telling stories in a room, a person running, and voices whispering.
“I would say this exhibit goes a long way to helping folks who are not incarcerated, have never been incarcerated, or may not even have family members or folks that they know who are incarcerated to understand what that experience is like,” Wokoma said. “There’s a really interesting way in which our society in particular frames and treats different classes or castes of people based on their life circumstance.”
Ric’kisha Taylor, hostess for the gallery, admired the beadwork in the exhibit and appreciated the insight the pieces provide into a new perspective.
“I feel like it’s rare to see the type of work that they do while they’re locked up,” Taylor said. Especially with some of these poems, you can almost feel the tension, or like the thought pattern that they’re having specifically.”
Wokoma said BPC keeps inmates educated and connected to their communities, helping them readjust to society once they have served their time and countering the idea that people become outcasts when they are incarcerated.
“They may be physically removed, but they should not be socially moved, spiritually removed, emotionally removed or politically removed,” Wokoma said. “There are all these ways in which folks are working to maintain continuity of connection between folks that have been removed from the community physically to make sure that the other bonds are not broken as well.”
“It’s like all these ways that folks are reduced, and in doing so, the human experience of what being incarcerated becomes an invisible experience for folks that are not,” Wokoma continued.
Wokoma said Johnson curated the exhibit to facilitate a conversation around the humanity of incarcerated individuals while giving them space to speak for themselves.
“Knowing Elisheba, she wants to facilitate a conversation around the humanity of these folks, but allowing them to be facilitated, but then just providing a space for them to speak in the community in their own words. And I believe this exhibit does that,” said Wokoma.
One project in the exhibit, Photo Requests From Solitary, shows people in solitary confinement connecting with artists on the outside. Incarcerated individuals were asked to describe images they wished they could see—such as a childhood street or the moment of their release—and those descriptions were turned into photographs, allowing them to experience parts of the outside world during isolation.
“That piece and so many other pieces in the exhibit invite us as viewers to really immerse ourselves inside of the meaning, and bring as much of who we are to what the what the piece is wanting to communicate,” Wokoma said. “Which is always the primary responsibility of art, is to catalogue some kind of thought and reflection in part of the viewer.”
