Coop Gallery is pleased to present Unit 2 (part 1), an exhibition featuring collaborations between a group of local artists and 11 prisoners on Tennessee’s Death Row.
The works included in this show were all made during the summer of 2013, when members of the group of artists made weekly visits to Unit 2 of the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in northwest Nashville to engage the prisoners in artistic collaborations and intensive discussions.
The show consists primarily of two types of works. It includes collaborative (or “add-on”)drawings that were handed back and forth over the course of the summer and modified with each exchange, and it also includes “surrogate projects” where the insiders asked the outsiders to do and experience things forbidden by their imprisonment. These works showcase an unlikely dialogue across the walls of prison, and they address the aspiration to transcend, albeit imaginatively, the dark realities of incarceration and death.
Members of the group will be on hand at all times during the gallery’s open hours (Fridays and Saturdays, 11-3) to answer questions about the project and about their visits to Death Row.
Unit 2 (part 1) will be the first in a series of exhibitions related to this collaboration.
The artists (along with one critic and art historian) who worked on the exhibition are as follows:
Abu Ali Abdur’Rahman
Mika Agari
Holly Carden
Ann Catherine Carter
Ron Cauthern
Tyrone Chalmers
Jessica Clay
Amy Clutter
Gary Cone
David Duncan
Robert Grand
Kristi Hargrove
Kennath Artez Henderson
Akil Jahi
Nickolus Johnson
Seth Lykins
Donald Middlebrooks
Upreyl Mitchell
Wayne Nichols
Robin Paris
Derrick Quintero
Zack Rafuls
Sharon Stewart
Alanna Styer
Josh Ungurait
Moses Williams
Tom Williams
Weng Tze Yang
Barbara Yontz