October 30 , 2019
My Art Got Me Through My Time: Portraits from Solitary Confinement
By Five Mualimm-ak
I have served over 40,000 hours in isolation at the New York City corrections facility on Rikers Island and in State prison facilities in Upstate New York. During my time in solitary confinement, I produced many portraits. By drawing faces, I tried to draw attention to others who were suffering as well and their reasons for being confined from humanity. Saving myself from the boredom of my own mind and constantly searching to distract myself from the torture of extreme isolation was a challenging task.
Solitary confinement is a form of torture that the United States practices to punish individuals for disobeying correctional facility rules. In 2012 the New York State chapter of the ACLU published the Boxed in report that showed that five out of six disciplinary infractions given to prisoners in New York State were for non-violent rule infractions.
Solitary confinement has been used to break people of color for nearly 400 years in America and is one of the punishments still used in regularity that was birthed from the chattel slavery era. It’s part of 400 Years of Inequality. Plantation owners would dig a hole in the middle of the cotton fields and bury a person in a metal box so others would witness the suffering and know there is a greater pain than physical punishment.
The United Nations has declared solitary confinement of over 15 days to be torture that causes irreparable damage to human beings.
Trapped across from me for a few months was a man named Black. Black was a quiet neighbor in the beginning weeks, but then he rapidly deteriorated. I found my strength through my art but Black did not have many coping mechanisms to deal with the harsh brutalities of solitary confinement. Listening to Black scream over the banging of 200 cell doors was hard to endure. One day he was dragged off the tier; then news of his suicide were circulated by the same staff that took him away. Black puts a face to the mental suffering that comes with cruel and unusual punishment. He is a brother that I failed to save. Black always said that he was alone in a crowded space, being in prison with no family contact. Half of all prison deaths happen in solitary confinement and 100 percent of people leave damaged.
“MELT” is a young Chinese American man from Fujian Province; MELT is the name by which he is known in prison. Based on his tattoos he was placed inside solitary confinement for being a part of a gang. Tattoos are one of the classifications corrections officials use to isolate a person using administrative segregation and other means of solitary confinement. But rather than gang insignia, his tattoos, also worn by other men, were the Chinese characters for “Love and Peace.”
MELT is spending the remainder of his life in prison. Following an attempted robbery of his family’s home, prosecutors charged MELT with possession of a firearm and actions that led to an unlawful death. I made this portrait of MELT to help his family survive in his absence. By sharing MELT’s story I hope to raise awareness of cruel and unusual punishment in sentencing. In America we will kill a person to show them that killing a person is wrong. One family suffers to show another family how they once suffered. That is not justice, in my opinion!
I saw many other men suffering because of their distance from family members. Quite often the subjects of my portraits were the family members they miss, especially their children.
Nieves asked me to produce a portrait of his daughter. I worked all through the week to make sure he shipped it in time for a visit that he was getting after two years of no contact. I worked with a single piece of lead and a piece of rubber from my sneakers. He was so ecstatic about his little girl’s face.
His visit never came. People are so oppressed that taking care of another family member in prison is an additional burden many cannot bear. Often, incarcerated people are left alone to survive inside while their families are surviving in the community.
Nieves returned this piece to me. Eventually, he took his own life in his cell. I have used this piece to raise attention to the human connection needed to survive isolation and incarceration.
To remain human in inhumane conditions is resistance in its truest form. Resilience is often forged in the most brutal environments; my art got me through my time.