Sheila Pinkel

My pieces in this show are included in larger bodies entitled Consumer Research (1980-1990) and/or Site Unseen: Incarceration (1999 – present). While I did these larger projects separately, I now realize that my concern about the implications of consuming (integral to capitalism) also includes the consumption of human beings that is implicit in the criminalization of them. The work Fear is our Gross National Product, made in the mid-1980s, was a response to the growth of the US military-industrial complex and escalation of US foreign military sales, pertinent today since the US continues to be the greatest seller of weapons to countries around the world. Both this work and the piece Human Eyes? Criminal Eyes? include double entendre, a device I often use for broader meaning. The work Made by Prisoners in a California Prison is the centerpiece of a work about the things made by prisoners in California prisons and the demographics of the people who are incarcerated in these prisons.

Fear is our Gross National Product (1986), Off-set print, 19 x 13 in., Made by Prisoners in a California Prison (2003), Ink-jet print, 24 x 18 in., Human Eyes? Criminal Eyes? (2017), Ink-jet print, 24 x 18 in.