Joseph Acker
– Artist’s Website –
David and Charles Koch, heads of Koch Industries, drawn by prisoner Joseph Acker, who is serving 10 years. All sales from a book associated with the art project will be donated to Bernie Sanders’ campaign. Photograph: Jeff Greenspan and Andrew Tider
Figures from companies such as Goldman Sachs and BP are among those ‘captured’ by inmates as part of two activists’ dig at corporate misdeeds
The Koch brothers, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and BP’s former boss Tony Hayward have had their mugshots drawn by a group of inmates as part of an art project entitled “Captured: people in prison drawing people who should be”.
None of the executives have been convicted of a crime, but the two New York City-based activists behind Captured have listed the “offenses” they claim the companies the executives oversaw perpetrated alongside the actual crime of the convict who drew them.
Goldman Sachs, for example, is accused of “mass deception” and “stealing taxpayers money”. Last month the firm paid $5bn to settle charges it mis-sold mortgage-backed bonds in the run-up the financial crisis, the latest in a series of fines related to its role in a crisis that triggered the worst recession in living memory. His portrait is drawn by Ryan Gragg, who is serving 15 years for murder.
Hayward was BP’s boss during the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010, the worst oil spill in US history and a disaster that claimed the lives of 11 workers. BP is accused of “manslaughter” and “environmental crimes” among other charges by the project. Hayward was drawn by Benjamin Gonzalez, who is serving nine years for robbery.
“If you took a whole bucket of crimes our convicted artists committed, they would line up with the types of crimes our companies have committed,” said Jeff Greenspan, who created the project with Andrew Tider.
The pair were behind the installation of a bust of Edward Snowden at a Brooklyn park, but this project throws their complaints with corporate America into stark relief: inmate Kim Vanpelt, who is on death row for capital murder, drew the CEO of Bank of America, Brian Moynihan. BofA’s rap sheet lists: “conspiracy, fraud, securities fraud, theft.” And the billionaire Koch Brothers are featured for facilitating “mass deception,” “public endangerment” and “rigging the system”.
Greenspan and Tider created the project to bring attention to corporate misdeeds. “From what we’ve researched, the actions of CitiBank have done a lot more damage to you and I and everyone we know in the community than just a stolen car,” said Greenspan.
The portraits and rap sheets can be seen on the project website and in a $40 book, the entire profits of which will be directed to the Bernie Sanders campaign.
We learned so much about … what it’s like to be an incarcerated person in this country
Andrew Tider, co-creator of ‘Captured’
To find the artists, the activists approached art rehabilitation programs in prisons, but those groups were not interested in being involved with something political. So the pair turned to eBay, where there is a section devoted to art made by prisoners and sold by family members. They found similar prison art networks on Facebook and began conversations with the families of people whose worked they liked. From there, word spread around prisoners and other artists began sending them work.
Each artist was paid $100 for their work, which often had to be paid through a system called JPay, which charges processing fees to prisoners accepting money. Tider said this meant they would have to pay $130 to some artists to cover the fees. Their frustrations with this, and how it takes advantage of people who largely come from underserved communities, inspired the pair to commission a portrait of JPay’s CEO, Ryan Shapiro.
“We learned so much about, on whatever level we can understand, what it’s like to be an incarcerated person in this country,” said Tider.
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The activists explained the thinking behind the project immediately to the prisoners who were then assigned portrait subjects. Most of the prisoners stuck with the people they were assigned but could draw someone else if they wanted to.
Prisoners were told that money raised from the project would go to a charity or cause, but not specifically the Sanders campaign.
The pair considered donating to corporate watchdog groups but settled on the Sanders’ campaign. “We felt the Bernie Sanders campaign has the most potential we feel to actually bring about real reform in how corporations behave and how they’re connected to our government,” said Greenspan.
All profits from the book sales go to support efforts to elect the Vermont senator. People involved with the project pledged to put their personal maximum contribution directly to the campaign, and excess money raised will support Sanders-related projects like rallies and other campaign projects.
Meanwhile, Tider and Greenspan are still in contact with the prisoners and their families. Greenspan said almost all the inmates admitted their guilt in the course of the project and did not think they should be freed: “They weren’t saying ‘hey if the [CEOs] are out of jail, I should be out of jail’, they were saying justice should be distributed evenly.”