How can an exhibition represent and give voice to a forgotten group of people? On The Inside, curated by Tatiana von Fürstenberg and designed by Eline Mul, puts on display the work of hundreds of LGBTQ+ artists currently serving time in the prison system. The submitted artwork, coupled with quotes from the artists, creates a powerful and humanizing message about injustice, but also about identity, love, and acceptance. In a recent conversation, I spoke with Mul (New York/Amsterdam) about her work on the pivotal initiative—from support on curation and drawing together von Fürstenberg’s ideas, to creating the overall design for the project, including an expressive visual identity, immersive exhibition space and website, and various other communication materials. Having worked both independently as well as with larger design studios such as 2×4 and MoMA in the last years, the deeply emotive and collaborative project was conceivably a slight shift for the adept designer, who handled each stage with careful consideration so as to properly frame such an urgent message.
BS (Ben Schwartz)
Can you give an introduction to the project and the individuals and organizations involved in putting the exhibition together? What initiated the idea for On The Inside, and how was the work collected?
EM (Eline Mul)
On the Inside is a project initiated by writer/director Tatiana von Fürstenberg, which started to take shape about six or seven years ago. After finding out about Black and Pink—a grassroots advocacy organization fighting for LGBTQ+ prisoner rights and needs, combating the prison industrial complex at large—Tatiana signed up for their pen pal initiative and was matched with an incarcerated member of the program. Through the art and words they shared in their letters, Tatiana realized how much is being kept from the world. Their correspondence emphasized the innate need of the prisoners to be seen, heard, and ultimately understood. This sparked the idea to strengthen these voices and find a way to show their talents. Tatiana posted an ad with an open call for art in Black and Pink’s newspaper, a bimonthly publication that gets spread across prisons in the US, reaching more than 13,000 incarcerated LGBTQ+ people and allies. She received more than 4,000 responses to the ad. A small selection of this work has been shown in two exhibitions: 450 pieces in New York in 2016, and 150 pieces at the current exhibition in Los Angeles, which is on view until September 8, 2019 at Craft Contemporary.
BS
How did Tatiana go about sorting through, organizing, and selecting which work she would show?
EM
For some time Tatiana didn’t know how to approach the overwhelming amount of drawings, or the responsibility of all of a sudden being the keeper of these works—works with immense power and weight to them. She had envelopes piled up in her house, but the idea for the exhibition as such didn’t exist yet. Tatiana and Natalia Provatas started archiving the drawings and putting them into large folders to make it more manageable as a collection, easier to go through to look at the works, but this way of viewing felt too limiting. That’s when the idea came to do an exhibition, to be able to share the collection with everyone. They printed out thumbnails of the works and from there she started thinking of the works intuitively by subject matter.
BS
How and at which point did you become involved?
EM
When Tatiana knew she wanted to do an exhibition, she reached out to the head of the CalArts design program looking for a designer, who recommended to get in touch with me. We met up weekly or sometimes twice weekly to talk and go through the works together. While sitting next to each other, we gradually figured out Tatiana’s exhibition message by filtering the works and thematically organizing everything.
BS
I’m curious about the process of thematically sorting the work. Could you talk about some of these themes and what sort of message you wanted them to convey for the show at large?
EM
The call for work was open-ended, but a large part of the submissions were portraits—mainly self-portraits showing daily life behind bars, expressions of identity, love, moments of transition—actual or imagined. There were also a lot of images depicting loved ones, political and spiritual leaders, LGBTQ+ advocacy, etc.
The self-portraits felt especially powerful to us. They showed love, hope, strength, vulnerability, acceptance. These impressions of identity are incredibly thoughtful and were important for On the Inside’s message. The exhibition underlines the idea that identity and a sense of self is valuable and worth claiming. In the works the incarcerated artists take back their identity and demand to be seen.
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Exhibition detail, On The Inside, Craft Contemporary Los Angeles, 2019. Photo: Blake Jacobsen
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Exhibition detail, On The Inside, Craft Contemporary Los Angeles, 2019. Photo: Blake Jacobsen
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Exhibition detail, On The Inside, Craft Contemporary Los Angeles, 2019. Photo: Blake Jacobsen
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Exhibition detail, On The Inside, Craft Contemporary Los Angeles, 2019. Photo: Blake Jacobsen
BS
What was the design process like for On the Inside? Beyond the identity, were there other aspects you were involved with?
EM
Around the time we had landed on the various themes, I started on the design process for the exhibition at Abrons Art Center in New York. We went through quite a lot of design rounds, figuring out what could work for the show, what kind of thing we were going for, and what felt right as a (re)presentation of the work and the contributors. After some time we realized that we wanted the show to be super straightforward and person-focused, so we stripped back quite a lot of the design and decided on the idea of filling the walls with large-scale collages made by blowing up a selection of the portraits. We wanted to create the feeling that you’re sharing the space with them.
The process was quite exceptional for me; over the years the exhibition grew to be a real collaboration between us. After spending a lot of time together in Los Angeles at the beginning of the project in 2015, I moved to New York just before the first exhibition. Being on opposite coasts, the communication wasn’t trouble-free. Plus the project required considerable effort and time—the identity design was just a small part of it all. I was involved in most aspects: curating, production, exhibition design, the website, communication materials, etc. So for the second show Tatiana and I made a conscious decision for me to travel back and forth to Los Angeles, as we realized we needed to be in the same space to connect and work on things together. That was a big help.
For both of the exhibitions I commissioned other designers to collaborate with me on specific pieces. I prefer working with others, so I was happy to open up the design and discussion to them; it was a nice and productive part of the process.
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On The Inside website, design Eline Mul
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On The Inside website, design Eline Mul
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On The Inside website, design Eline Mul
BS
You recently worked as an art director at MoMA, where you worked on the museum’s rebrand and various exhibition designs. Did the two roles influence each other? Was there anything you took from one that you brought to the other, any big differences?
EM
I’m not sure they directly influenced each other, but having the experience of thinking and designing for spaces was definitely helpful for both roles. Every time you go through the motions of a project it becomes easier/more logical, as the overall structure and design processes become more and more a part of your system and toolkit.
I really enjoyed working at MoMA because of the people, but also because I was given enough space and trust to both experiment with things I hadn’t tried before (various types of animations, a paint-washed title wall, specialty printing, etc.), while also helping push projects and decisions forward within the studio and the museum as a whole. It was great to have the opportunity to try things in such a large institution and be supported. It gave me the confidence I needed for On the Inside.
The big difference between an independent exhibition like On the Inside and an exhibition done for an institution is the amount of people that have a say. Where it is only me and Tatiana making decisions for On the Inside, at MoMA there are a lot of contributors to each of their projects. It requires you to be less precious with your ideas, because an incredible amount of people have a say—visitors included.
BS
Language seems to be an important part of the show. Can you talk about your use of language as a means to further humanize these artists?
EM
There are a couple of different layers to the show. The base layer is the wallpapers with blown-up portraits; the second layer is a selection of quotes; and placed on top of that are the framed original artworks.
The quotes are excerpts from letters that the artists sent along with their artworks. Most quotes talk about being seen and treated as “other”—through conditions of incarceration, thoughts about identity and self, statements against a society that has turned away, LGBTQ+ support and family, and stories from the artist’s lives.
Besides the main part of the show, there is a small section with a structure built to the size of an ad-seg solitary confinement cell. Covering the exterior walls of the cell are facts and statements taken from Coming out of Concrete Closets, a survey conducted in 2014 by Black and Pink, amongst 1,200 LGBTQ+ prisoners. The inside of the cell has the names of all of the 4,000 contributors.
BS
This show can be understood and appreciated on a lot of different levels. I think the show, of course, invokes strong messages about prison injustice, especially in the LGBTQ+ community. However, after seeing the work, the show seems to communicate something much more personal. Besides being political, it seems to humanize a group of people that so often are forgotten. Was this a curatorial effort or simply a result of the type of work that was sent in?
EM
Both. Many of the portraits are drawn on the back of forms, print outs, and scrap paper generated by the facilities. The act of taking a document covered in rules and regulations and turning it into an expression of self is a powerful act. It is a refusal by the prisoners to passively accept institutionalization.
There are more than 2.1 million prisoners in the United States, approximately 0.75 percent of the country’s population, and 20 percent of the world’s prisoners; 21.5 percent of these prisoners are still waiting for sentencing. Incarceration in the US has increased by 500 percent over the last 40 years, while crime has decreased exponentially. LGBTQ+ people are three times more likely to become incarcerated due to a lack of resources, support, employment, housing, discrimination, etc.
From Tatiana’s side, On the Inside has been a slow and steady act of protest. Instead of attacking a system she can’t bring down by herself, Tatiana’s intention is to create action through awareness. The personal strength seen in the drawings, and the acts of defiance inherent in each piece collectively provide the opportunity to make the gallery an active space of protest.
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Exhibition detail, On The Inside, Craft Contemporary Los Angeles, 2019. Photo: Blake Jacobsen
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Exhibition detail, On The Inside, Craft Contemporary Los Angeles, 2019. Photo: Blake Jacobsen
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Exhibition detail, On The Inside, Craft Contemporary Los Angeles, 2019. Photo: Blake Jacobsen
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Exhibition detail, On The Inside, Craft Contemporary Los Angeles, 2019. Photo: Blake Jacobsen
BS
As the artists are likely still incarcerated, you created a means for the exhibition audience to communicate with the artists. How does that system work? What have the results been? Have the artists reacted to the show?
EM
To open up a more direct line of communication between visitor and artist, we gave each work and quote an accompanying code. With this code, visitors can send a text to a messaging system. The texts are transcribed, compiled, and sent out by mail to the artists every other week. In the opening weekend of the exhibition, the system received over 100 messages, all incredibly encouraging. The first batch was just sent out to the prisons.
The next step is a newsprint of the show, so we can share the exhibition with the incarcerated artists and say thank you for their contribution. I’m looking forward to hearing their responses. I hope the artists are happy with the outcome, that they feel accurately represented and appreciated through our and their work.
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On the Inside is currently on view at the Craft Contemporary (Los Angeles) until September 8, 2019.
On the Inside credits:
Project Director
Tatiana von Fürstenberg
Exhibition Designers
Eline Mul and Tatiana von Fürstenberg
Graphic Designer
Eline Mul
Project Manager
Natalia Provatas
Prisoner Liaison
Reed Miller
In collaboration with Black and Pink