Makes Me Wanna Holla: Art, Death & Imprisonment

Logan Center Exhibitions, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture (CSRPC), and the Pozen Center Human Rights Lab (HRL) at the University of Chicago are pleased to present Makes Me Wanna Holla: Art, Death & Imprisonment featuring 2022-23 “Artist for the People” Practitioner Fellows Dorothy Burge and Michelle Daniel Jones with Mourning Our Losses.

Burge and Daniel Jones completed year-long fellowship residencies co-hosted by CSRPC and HRL that explored the injustices of the carceral system. Their work engages critical race and human rights issues by looking back at forgotten, ignored, or suppressed stories and people. This exhibition asks: “Who gets remembered?”

For this exhibition, Burge presents Won’t You Help to Sing These Songs of Freedom?, a series of portrait quilts depicting survivors of Chicago police torture; two quilts honoring African American trans women murdered in Chicago in 2022; and a lifesize portrait quilt of Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3 who survived four decades of solitary confinement. Accompanying the torture survivor quilts are newly collected oral histories, artworks, family photos, and poems compiled by students at the School of the Art Institute.

As both curator and artist, Daniel Jones presents the Mourning Our Losses (MOL) Traveling Memorial, We Shall Remember. This exhibit immerses attendees in a multi-sensory experience of COVID-19 in prisons using sound, statistics and the artistry of those currently and formerly incarcerated that speaks to the horrors of the pandemic. MOL highlights the moral cost of mass incarceration while honoring the lives of all who died while living or working behind bars.

Makes Me Wanna Holla: Art, Death & Imprisonment is presented by Logan Center Exhibitions, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, and the Pozen Center Human Rights Lab at the University of Chicago. Practitioner Fellows are supported in part by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the Centering Race Consortium, a partnership between race studies centers at Brown University, Stanford University, UChicago, and Yale University to center the study of race in the arts and humanities. MOL’s Traveling Memorial is also supported by the Prison Neighborhood + Arts/Education Program and Illinois Humanities. 

Programming details

Opening reception: Friday, July 7, 6–8pm 

Holla Back: Art and Conversations: Saturday, July 8, 10am–3:30pm
Logan Center Screening Room and Great Hall
Growing out of the exhibition, the artists will take you further into the world of art, death and imprisonment with conversations and workshops.

What These Walls Won’t Hold, 10-11:15am, Screening Room
Documentary screening and talkback with filmmaker Adamu Chan

We Shall Remember: COVID-19 in Prisons, 11:15am–12:30pm, Screening Room and Great Hall
Panel with members of  Mourning Our Losses on the impact of COVID-19 in prisons, and a participatory memory project that will be added to the gallery exhibition

Lunch and tabling by community organizations, 12:30-1:30pm, Gidwitz Lobby

Survivors of Police Torture Speak, 1:30-3:30pm, Screening Room
Context and Framing with Alice​ Kim​ and Doroth​y Burge​ 
Panel discussion with Carl Williams, Anthony Holmes and LaTanya Sublett, moderated by Damon Williams

Virtual Tour: Think Tank at Stateville Prison: Thursday, July 27
Private event

Black August—Solidarity Quilting Workshop: Saturday, August 19, 12–3pm
Logan Center Rooms 801 and 802
Send messages to incarcerated police torture survivors by making quilt patches with Dorothy Burge. Featuring guest speakers Mary L. Johnson (mother of Michael Johnson, incarcerated torture survivor) and Gregory Banks (torture survivor). 

Artists Live with Dorothy Burge and Michelle Daniel Jones: Wednesday, ​September​ 6, 6–7:30pm
Logan Center Performance Penthouse