Over at We Make Money Not Art, Regine has a post up about an international art fair in Italy that included the work of Guatemalan performance artist Regina José Galindo, whose work addresses “social injustice, gender discrimination, racism and the governmental atrocities of her own country.” Earlier this year 2008, she began a project in protest of America’s booming industry of private prisons — and that project involved her own family.
For her performance, America’s Family Prison, Galindo rented a cell for $8,000 from Sweeper Metal Fabricators Corp and had it transported to the Art Pace gallery in San Antonio TX.
The artist, her husband and their 2-year-old daughter locked themselves in the mobile prison unit for 36 hours. Gallery visitors could peep through the narrow windows of the brightly-lighted cell and observe the family as they tried to occupy themselves with books and drawings during their voluntary detention.
The performance refers in particular to T. Don Hutto “Family Residential Center,” a for-profit private prison located in Taylor, near Austin, and operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private jail company in the world with one of the highest stock market values on Wall Street.
T. Don Hutto is the first prison authorized by the state to lodge whole families: men, pregnant women, adolescents, children, women, and even babies. The inmates are not necessarily criminals, very often they are detained there while their immigration status is determined.
Below, an excerpt from a documentary about life in T. Don Hutto Prison. More of that documentary, and more photos of Galindo’s installation with her own family, here: Artissima: America’s Family Prison (WMMNA, thanks Susannah!)