SaveArtSpace and Art at a Time Like This (ATLT) partnered to present the Houston, Texas edition of 8X5, a nationwide public art campaign named for the size of an average prison cell. This timely public intervention presented the work of artists responding to mass incarceration and inequalities in the justice system. 

Curated by Barbara Pollack and Anne Verhallen, Art at a Time Like This; Christopher Blay, chief curator, Houston Museum of African American Culture; Bridget Bray, independent Houston-based curator; Ashley DeHoyos Sauder, curator, Diverseworks.

The 8x5 Houston selected artists are Chandrika Metivier, Faylita Hicks, Jared Owens, Jenny Polak with The Fortune Society Artists, Kill Joy, Mel Chin, Monti Hill, McKenna Gessner, Rebo, and Trenton Doyle Hancock.

NOTE: THIS PUBLIC ART EXHIBITION WAS CENSORED BY ALL BILLBOARD COMPANIES IN HOUSTON, TX. Read more about our experience in The Art Newspaper, Hyperallergic, and ArtNet News.

The statement used in my billboard submission was an excerpt from a prison zine titled Transforming Carceral Logics: 10 Reasons to Dismantle the Prison Industrial Complex Through Queer/Trans Analysis and Action – S. Lamble which I discovered while reading a catalog of digitized zines provided by True Leap Press.

True Leap Press is a radical publishing collective that is currently located in New York and California. We promote Black intellectual struggle and advocate for the building of mass-based, autonomous projects for antiracist, anticapitalist, and antipatriarchal political education.