Moyo 2015

Color pencil and white paint from freshly-painted prison cell walls on construction paper on two boards

50,5 x 76,5 cm

This piece was a journey.

I remember after my cell was shaken down – I told you how the cells are searched every 3 months thoroughly. We are locked in our cages all day and fed sake meals – oily peanut butter sandwiches on repeat for a few weeks – and lots of constipation for all the bread. We are only allowed 3 showers per week.

It was during one of these times that the guards, while I was in the shower and they were doing the search, they took a bucket of white paint and covered all the drawings and quotes I had on my wall. One quote was by Gandhi-ji that went: "Strength does not come from physical ability but from an indomitable will."

When the guards brought me back to the cell in cuffs and released me, to clean up the abject mess of my items they’d made, I noticed the pain on the wall over my quotes and that some of the paint was still wet. And having not touched paint like this in YEARS, I was happy for that and used it in this work.

Strangely, this is when the work became more cohesive – out of the transformation of something that wasn’t meant to be beauty but came thru to be when seen in a different light.

We build things to cover up things but that same energy can be used to build something of merit or to uncover some deeper truth that can be more advantageous than our efforts simply to confine.