Carving Out Rights: From Inside the Prison Industrial Complex

Inside prisons across the U.S., incarcerated people struggle everyday for their basic rights, claiming again and again their status as human beings. Here, within the largest democracy in the world (conditional though it may be), incarcerated people suffer indignities from terrible living conditions to physical and sexual violence, all under the aegis of justice. 

As a tool to discuss the limits and ideals of human rights within a carceral state, artists at Stateville Prison, who struggle daily for their own human rights, created block prints of each article in the declaration. The process of drawing, carving, and inking each print created the time and space for artists to critique and reflect on the ways the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is simultaneously aspirational, strategic, and fraught with the legacy of the violence of its founding states. For universal human rights to be relevant, it is essential that the most impacted people be heard and their vision of human rights centered. 

This project was inspired by Meredith Stern’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights print project and developed in a class taught by Aaron Hughes through the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project. 

Edited by Aaron Hughes & Sarah Ross 

Art & Poetry Editors: Fred Sasaki, Sarah Ross, Tara Betts, and Aaron Hughes 

Artwork by Carlos Ayala, Aryules Bivens, Jeff Campbell, (Wolf) Alan Christensen, Darrell Fair, Salvador Herrera, Alex Koehler, Juan Luna, Charles McLaurin, Willie McGee, Rickey Quezada, & Marshall Stewart 

Text by Barbara Ransby, Christophe Ringer, Darrell Fair, Aaron Hughes, & Meredith Stern 

Cover Design by Damon Locks 

Book Design by Aaron Hughes 

192 pages, Softcover 

7 x 9.75 in. | 17.78 x 24.76 cm. 

Spring 2022