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The Political Prisoners Being Celebrated In The Nation’s Capital For Memorial Day

The mural CREDIT: CARIMAH TOWNES
The mural CREDIT: CARIMAH TOWNES

Judith Vasquez has spent almost 25 years in prison for a murder she swears she did not commit. Three of those years were spent in solitary confinement, where she was raped by guards and served raw food in a dark cell. She’s dealt with depression, claustrophobia, agoraphobia, and hasn’t had the opportunity to meet her own grandchildren.

“Thinking back about being in that cell brings tears to my eyes. Three years in a cell might not sound like so long to a civilian who has never been to jail,” she wrote in Hell is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement. “But I can tell you, those three years felt like a lifetime. It changes people. It turns you into someone you never thought you would be. Your life is just never the same. It’s like when a soldier goes to war; there are things that will stay with that soldier forever, and he finds it hard to speak of and ends up having to live with PTSD.”

It turns you into someone you never thought you would be.

Now, Vasquez’ face and story are being memorialized in a mural and film at one of the country’s oldest museums.

As the U.S. remembers its fallen soldiers this Memorial Day weekend, artists from all over the country are flocking to Washington, D.C. to commemorate people, like Vasquez, living on the fringes of society. During a two-day culture lab hosted by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building, painters, drawers, poets, musicians, and dancers will showcase what it means to develop complex identities in a world that tries to define us in singular terms.

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According to curator Adriel Luis, most of the artists have never displayed their work in formal museum settings. All of them were handpicked based on conversations with organizers, curators, and non-profit affiliates who chose the people in their communities who could best portray the theme of intersectionality, or the ways in which social constructions like race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and religion cross over and define people.

The Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building CREDIT: Carimah Townes
The Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building CREDIT: Carimah Townes

The venue, the Arts and Industries Building, was the first U.S. national museum dedicated to “innovation and ways that American identity has transformed since the beginning of the Smithsonian,” Luis explained. Its doors have been closed since 2004 due to renovations. But when it opens this weekend, the museum will be the perfect space for creators to express themselves and redefine what it means to live in the U.S today.

And in line with the theme of intersectionality, one of those artists, muralist Vaimoana Niumeitolu, has decided to honor incarcerated prisoners of color, including Vasquez, whose complicated identities are confined to a cell. I talked to her about the inspiration for her exhibit and the message she hopes it will communicate.

Describe the mural and what the different parts represent.

It’s called a Mural Ngatu Mandala. Ngatu is a Tongan art form that [lived] long before Christianity, long before colonialism in the South Pacific. It’s done in groups of women and children. It’s made from the Mulberry bark being pounded every day. That pounding — that drumming — is the heartbeat of the community in Tonga. When Ngatu is given to another person, that’s the highest honor. That’s what we’re doing here: honoring our political prisoners, people in prison, and these people who have beliefs about having freedom for everybody, having justice, having a sense of sovereignty not just for communities and people but also for lands. To really have people own the sense of all of themselves.

What is a mandala?

It’s the circle and also the design of the squares. The squares and the rings are traditional markers in a mandala.

Monks [create them] in a group. They go through intense training to create a mural mandala. What really stood out to me is the impermanence of it. They spend a whole week on putting the sand in intense visual structures, and then it blows away. It all comes apart. It can be deconstructed.

There are several faces on the mural. Who are they?

Judith Vasquez is in prison [for 30 years to life]. In September [she’ll have been there] for 25 years. She’s in the center because I really wanted to honor a woman of color. She represents women of color in prison [and] that this could happen to any of us. It’s representing the alarming rates that women of color are imprisoned. She was accused of murdering someone. That person that killed her husband. She saw her husband get killed right in front of her. She was trying to save her husband and her children.

Assata Shakur CREDIT: Carimah Townes
Assata Shakur CREDIT: Carimah Townes

How’d you hear about her story?

I got to know her story from my friend Kunal, who’s a lawyer in New Jersey. He really wanted to school me on the prison system in New Jersey, how there’s 13 prisons [there]. A lot of what’s happening in the prison industrial complex right now, New Jersey is on the front lines. For example, Assata Shakur was in the same prison that Judy is in now. A lot of political prisoners get arrested in New Jersey. Sundiata Acoli is in a prison in New Jersey right now. Kunal is also representing a man who’s on hunger strike. He’s been on hunger strike since last year. So all of this is happening in New Jersey, [but it’s] just not out there in public.

What did you take away from your experience talking to her?

She’s just an amazing artist. She’s an amazing person. I related to her immediately because she got arrested when she was my age, 37. She had two kids. She was raised in Harlem and she lived in Jersey City, where I’m currently living. And I lived in Harlem for eight years. I know all her stomping grounds. She had stories of being in New York City in the 60s. She’s also a musician.

Who are the other people depicted in the mural?

Assata Shakur is at the top, a pillar of freedom. She is everything. We have Oscar Lopez Rivera. [He’s] been in prison now for 32 years, as a political prisoner in Puerto Rico, for fighting for the sovereignty of Puerto Rico. We have Ojore Lutalo, who is a former political prisoner. He was there for 28 years in Trenton, New Jersey. He was in solitary confinement for 22 years, solely on his political beliefs.

What does intersectionality mean to you and how does it relate to the stories of people behind bars?

In order to talk about one struggle, we must talk about another.

In order to talk about one struggle, we must talk about another. We’re all interconnected in some way. When I talk about being Tongan, that’s so connected to me being a woman. That’s so connected to being an artist. That’s so connected to me having access to these communities. To me, intersectionality means that you can’t just be talking about one thing over another, that one thing is more important than the other. You really need to talk about all these things that not only identify us but also make us — that need to be represented.

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The film that accompanies the mural touches on various systemic issues that contribute to mass incarceration and what it means to be a political prisoner. Why was it important to include that context?

[In the film] we’ve interviewed Ojore and Bonnie, who’s this civil and human rights activist who talks about how, in doing this work, the prison system represents corporations. [It] is a business in our society. We can’t just talk about the prison system by itself. We need to connect it to poverty, mental illness. She talks about how many people with mental illness are in prison and in solitary confinement. We must talk about immigration and immigration reform because there’s so many immigrants right now that are detained, specifically women and children.

At the end of the day, what do you want people to take away from both the mural and the film?

I really want them to take away questions. What is this? Who is she? Who is he? Why are they honoring this? What is that design? I really want them to have questions and go look that up and have conversations, rather than just being like ‘Wow this is cool, this is great.’