Untitled

2016 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
21.59 x 27.94 cm

This untitled ink and pencil drawing by James “Yaya” Hough is made on what the artist calls “institutional paper”, or the state-issued forms that monitor the daily activities of prisoners, of which, each detainee is generally required to fill out in triplicate. The form used for this drawing details a weekly menu for the prisoners. Hough’s drawing depicts three grimacing figures, riding atop the back of a larger, female figure on all fours. Her hands and feet are plunged into holesthat plunge, seemingly endlessly, through the surface of the paper. All of the figures wear ball caps—a recurring motif in the artist’s drawings. The large figure appears to call out in pain as the smaller figure sitting behind her head yanks at her hair. The power of this artwork is two-fold. Firstly, it appropriates and documents the system’s formal processes of control. But is also addresses the artist’s reflections on this method of terror, often through surrealistic, if not nightmarish, imagery in which bodies are sliced, tethered, dominated, and treated like fodder for the machine. To illustrate this relation, the works are framed in such a fashion so that the recto and verso of each document is visible.

Working in ballpoint pen, pencil, and watercolor, often on the backs of bureaucratic prison forms, James “Yaya” Hough’s work conveys the burdens of incarcerated life, revealing not only the brutal reach of the carceral system, but laying bare its affects. Sentenced to life without parole in 1992, Hough went to prison at age 17; after 27 years, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that such sentences for juveniles is unconstitutional, and Hough was released. The artist, both independently, and as a member of a network of other artists who share a similar history, is one of the key voices working at the intersection of art and the criminal justice system today.

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