Transforming walls into bridges: art, empathy and mass incarceration in the United States

In the wake of Black Lives Matter, artworks exploring the experience of incarceration have burst onto the American contemporary art scene. Many break away from the iconography of the judicial institution and contrast with the archetypical figures of the "hardened criminal" and the "victim-object" which circulate in the media and in cultural imaginaries. They thereby create new pathways for empathy between non-incarcerated viewers and the incarcerated. This article identifies seven aesthetic strategies employed to this end, drawing on works by Sara Bennett, Russell Craig, Jared Owens, Marcus Manganni, Jesse Krimes and Sable Elyse Smith which seek to create the conditions for non-hierarchical identification between non-incarcerated audiences and the incarcerated.