Seeing Through Stone - San Jose Museum of Art

Seeing through Stone brings together artwork by contemporary artists from around the globe whose work engages prisons, justice and freedom. Moving beyond exhibitions that are about prisons and instead oriented towards artists who help provide a vision—and a model—of abolition in practice, Seeing through Stone highlights global networks of care and abolitionist world-building. Bringing together artwork by over 81 artists and collectives including 16 new commissions, Seeing through Stone features works which reflect the global scope of carceral conditions and the movements resisting prisons world-wide. With reference to poet Etheridge Knight’s evocation of those who have “the secret eyes”—Seeing through Stone highlights the works of artists, including those who are formerly and currently incarcerated, that offer a vision beyond carceral systems, drawing out the flourishing collective story and alternative imagining currently underway in creating a future free of prisons. This is the largest, multi-sited exhibition to-date co-organized with Institute of the Arts and Sciences at University of California, Santa Cruz as part of the ongoing Visualizing Abolition series.