An unsettling pair of pink and purple fleshy globs on a sterile blue examination table are among the first works to greet visitors upon entering the new Brooklyn home of the Center for Art and Advocacy, a nonprofit that supports artists affected by incarceration. Installed in the middle of the room, the silicon sculptures “Slop (top)” (2017) and “Floater” (2016) were created by Texas-based artist Courtney Cone, who participated in the organization’s Right of Return (RoR) Fellowship for formerly incarcerated artists in 2019.
The installation, which investigates the bodily dehumanization experienced by women and femme-presenting individuals in prisons, sits near a wall displaying an orange gouache painting by New Mexico-based artist Sheri Crider, who participated in RoR’s first cohort of fellows in 2017. Her work depicts a scene from a drive through the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona, when she came across a monument marking the 1886 capture of Chiricahua-Apache leader Geronimo.
These are just a couple of the dozens of visual artworks, written projects, and films by over 35 RoR fellows in the inaugural exhibition of the Center for Art and Advocacy, founded by formerly incarcerated artist Jesse Krimes. Collective Gestures: Building Community through Practice runs through September 20 at the center’s new 2,600-square-foot programming space on the ground floor of a newly built affordable housing complex in Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy).
Launched in 2022, the Center is a successor project and grant recipient of the six-year Art for Justice Fund (A4J) — an initiative to end mass incarceration established by philanthropist Agnes Gund and managed by the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. (In 1973, New York Governor Norman Rockefeller helped pass statutes known as the “Rockefeller Drug Laws,” which mandated strict sentences for low-level, nonviolent drug sales and possession, and led to increased incarceration rates in the state by the 1980s.)
The nonprofit is based on three programs: the RoR fellowship, which annually awards $20,000 to a cohort of six artists; a forthcoming professional mentorship and arts curriculum program known as the Academy; and a residency based in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, slated to launch next year.
The Center’s gallery, which has been outfitted with moveable walls and built-in projection screens, will serve as a designated venue to showcase the RoR fellows’ work, Krimes told Hyperallergic. He hopes that the site will function as a “gathering space” for the fellows, who are each based around the country and often face travel limitations due to parole sentences and other reasons related to their incarceration.
One of these out-of-town fellows is Nashville-based artist Omari Booker, who worked on a book about his 15-year prison sentence during his participation in RoR last year. For the opening exhibition, he contributed the oil painting “Hero” (2024), depicting an unhoused neighbor named B standing on top of a gas station; it is part of a series centering on B that he plans to exhibit in September. Booker said that this new body of work shares a common theme of liberation that was underscored in his RoR project.
Although the Center’s new physical space will be an important convening point for the RoR fellows, Krimes added that it will also be “in many ways, a community center” for the local residents of Bed-Stuy — a historically predominantly Black and low-income neighborhood that has witnessed steadily increasing costs of living over the last two decades.
“Bed-Stuy is a very heavily directly impacted community in New York from incarceration,” Krimes said. The organization has already contacted institutions and organizations like the Brooklyn Museum and the Laundromat Project to build partnerships.
It will also be an important space for RoR fellows currently based in New York, such as Brooklyn-based street artist Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez. His sculpture “Sandia Prayer Flavor” (2025), which consists of an oversized resin paleta (Mexican popsicle), sits in the center of the gallery space. The work draws on the experiences of Mexican immigrants by spotlighting cultural heritage in suspended rosary beads and exposing the brutalities of federal immigration enforcement officials through an etching that reads “U.S. Inhumane and Cruelty Enforcement.” It is part of his I.C.E. SCREAM (2025) sculpture series, which earlier this year was awarded the Impact Prize at Frieze Los Angeles.
At last week’s opening, Quiñonez, who has been incarcerated several times for non-violent crimes related to graffiti and vandalism, wore a neon-orange “Free Gary Tyler” pin in support of the wrongfully convicted artist, whose work is also featured in the show.
Quiñonez told Hyperallergic that the RoR fellowship helped him return to sculpture and installation work.
“It’s important for me to be in a space that supports artwork that has a message,” Quiñonez said. “A space where you can share that message not just to people that are here to collect art, but also people who need to feel like they’re being seen and being heard.”
