Gina Dent
Faculty Research Director; Co-Director, Visualizing Abolition; Professor, Humanities
Fostering art, research, and education to imagine— and build— a world without prisons.
Visualizing Abolition is a public scholarship initiative at University of California, Santa Cruz designed to shift the social attachment to prisons through art and education. Working across prison borders and in collaboration with current and formerly incarcerated people, as well as those without that lived experience, the overarching goal is to change the narrative that links prisons to justice, contributing instead to the unfolding collective story and alternative imagining underway to create a future free of prisons.
Faculty Research Director; Co-Director, Visualizing Abolition; Professor, Humanities
Director and Chief Curator; Co-Director, Visualizing Abolition; Co-Director, Aesthetics of Resilience
Transitions Program Coordinator
Director of Visualizing Abolition Educational Initiatives
Artist
Visualizing Abolition Visiting Scholar
Assistant Director of Inside Initiatives
Artist
Visualizing Abolition Program Manager, Curator, and Head of Academic Programs
Visualizing Abolition Program Coordinator
Explore
Event Series
A series of three events organized by scholar Denise Carrascosa that explore the connections between abolition feminism and art in Brazil.
Podcast Series
A three-episode podcast series from Visualizing Abolition exploring the role documentary can play in imagining a world without prisons. Hosted by Pooja Rangan, the series brings together filmmakers, scholars, and system-impacted artists and organizers who are rethinking how prisons are represented, with an eye toward collective liberation.
Prisons are so ingrained in history and the cultural imagination as to appear inevitable. Yet as long as prisons have existed, alternatives have flourished. Seeing through Stone accompanies the largest-ever exhibition emerging from the movement for prison abolition in the United States. The art and texts in this catalog explore the shared capacity for the radical sight permeating through prison walls, and include contributions from artists, writers and activists both currently and formerly incarcerated, alongside those without that lived experience. Over 80 artists and collectives from around the world contribute work, while the original texts are authored by Gina Dent, Lauren Schell Dickens, Rachel Nelson, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Nane Alejandrez, and Robin D.G. Kelley.
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