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Labyrinth
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Labyrinth is the result of a yearlong collaboration with The City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program’s Restorative Justice program. The collaborators include inmates at Graterford State Prison (PA) as well as participants in Mural Arts’ Guild re-entry program. This project focuses on the human costs for the victims of crime as well as for the perpetrators. It contends that our present system of mass incarceration is destroying families and neighborhoods, and that the members of the most affected communities, who often go unheard, have potential answers and solutions.
The 40 × 40 foot chain-link labyrinth is a platform for public expression. The maze represents not only those trapped in the correctional system, but society as a whole, as we all must navigate and pay the price of mass incarceration. Infographics surround the structure, detailing the costs and effects of mass incarceration.
Members of the public were invited to walk through the structure and encouraged to make and leave behind their own mementos related to the subject. Throughout the duration of the Open Source exhibition, Mural Arts hosted programs offering participants the ability to produce representations of how they, their families, and their communities have been affected by mass incarceration, and to voice their ideas for solutions and alternatives. Participants placed their contributions directly on the chain-link structure. Initially transparent, the labyrinth gradually became opaque as contributions were added.