Seeing from the Block: Observing the Justice System through the Collection of the Nasher Museum

Seeing from the Block: Observing the Justice System through the Collection of the Nasher Museum features artworks from the permanent collection that depict incarceration and prison architecture throughout history. It is curated by artist Sherrill Roland (b. 1984, Asheville, NC) whose interdisciplinary practice reckons with concepts of innocence, identity, and community in the context of the American criminal justice system. This installation accompanies the exhibition, Processing Systems: Numbers by Sherrill Roland, in the Incubator Gallery, which debuts new work by Roland. 

In preparation for that exhibition, Roland examined these artworks for research and inspiration. While some pieces depict inmates and police patrols, others show federal buildings, floorplans, and facades that hint more subtly at Roland’s interest in the architecture of incarceration. 

At the installation’s center is a triptych by Charles Gaines featuring a mug shot-like photograph, an ink drawing of the original photograph comprised of tiny numbers plotted on graph paper, and a composite image made up of many faces in this series. Like Gaines, Roland employs digits, formulas, and grids to create numerical portraits. In Roland’s case, these are United States Federal and State Correctional Identification Numbers. This conceptual practice allows him to simultaneously honor and protect the identities of individuals who have been wrongly incarcerated and exonerated in North Carolina in recent decades.