Amy Elkins

  • Looking at Masculinity
    • Looking at Masculinity
    • Wallflower II
    • Danseur
    • Elegant Violence
    • Lucas
    • Wallflower
  • Looking at Incarceration
    • Looking at Incarceration
    • Black is the Day, Black is the Night
    • Black is the Day, Black is the Night Book
    • Parting Words
    • The Golden State
    • Per(Sister): Incarcerated Women of Louisiana
    • Holding Pattern
    • The Sunshine State
  • Looking Inward During a Global Pandemic
    • Looking Inward During a Global Pandemic
    • Anxious Pleasures
    • Anxious Pleasures Book
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Holding Pattern

2020


In this site-specific installation, I utilize countless catalog images of prison uniforms to examine the dizzying effects of binge incarceration in a nation that on any given day holds over two million people in state, federal and private prisons while generating over $1 billion annually selling products and services created behind bars.


Using prison uniforms originally designed to classify, flatten and strip individuality, ironically often made through prison labor programs, I created intricate patterns and text pieces that wallpaper the dimensions of the average prison cell and animations that move in calculated synchronicity on transparent televisions.  Through these processes, I explore the ways in which carceral spaces produce what Foucault termed ‘docile bodies’ through twenty-four hour control and surveillance over the uniformed men, women and children entering these systems.


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