A brand new mural by the artist Dindga McCannon was unveiled as we speak at Rikers Island, the infamous jail island within the East River that hosts New York Metropolis’s largest jail. The mural, titled In direction of a Brighter Tomorrow! (2024), seems on the outside wall of the Re-entry Service Heart, the place lately launched people can choose up cellphones and naloxone on their method to freedom.
The mural depicts a bunch of individuals joyfully strolling out of a jail constructing to rejoin their welcoming group whereas carrying luggage labelled “resilience”, “job” and “household”. The scene is surrounded by sunshine, musical notes and flowers, with the phrases “self love”, “braveness”, “hope” and “goals” breaking chains alongside the perimeters.
McCannon created In direction of a Brighter Tomorrow! in live performance along with her son, the artist Harmarkhis McCannon, and folks incarcerated on the island—particularly, sufferers in therapeutic housing models for these with substance-use and mental-health points. The work was commissioned by NYC Well being + Hospitals/Correctional Well being Service, which gives medical help to folks imprisoned at Rikers; it’s the newest of 37 murals painted at NYC Well being + Hospitals websites in recent times.
“It was great collaborating on this mural with the sufferers of Rikers Island,” McCannon mentioned in an announcement. “It was them who advised the optimistic uplifting theme of the mural, in addition to enthusiastically serving to to color it … There’s plenty of expertise inside these partitions, and I hope that it’s going to proceed to flourish.”
The 76-year-old artist, raised in Harlem and identified for her textile works and found-object quilts, is a co-founder of the Seventies artwork collective The place We At Black Ladies Artists Inc. together with Kay Brown, Religion Ringgold and Gylbert Coker, amongst others. (Ringgold, who died final week at age 93, created her personal Rikers mural in 1971; it was moved to the Brooklyn Museum in 2022.) Ignored for many years, McCannon solely obtained her first main solo present at a business gallery in 2021.
“We hope the mural will function a beacon of power, hope and optimism for each one who is launched from Rikers,” Patsy Yang, the senior vp for correctional well being companies at NYC Well being + Hospitals, mentioned in an announcement.
Rikers, with its repute for violence and brutality, has been a humiliation to the town for many years and is legally mandated to close down in 2027, though it seems this deadline is not going to be met. Earlier this month, New York Metropolis agreed to pay a file $28m to the household of an incarcerated 18-year-old who suffered extreme mind injury after trying to hold himself in 2019 as a number of correctional officers watched with out taking motion.