John Isiah Walton. Rodeo, 2016; installation view. Courtesy of the Artist and The Front. Photo: John Isiah Walton.

Walton’s series of paintings and drawings depicts the rodeo at the Angola State Penitentiary, an 18,000-acre former slave plantation.[1] The Angola Rodeo is the longest running rodeo held within prison walls in the nation. Each April and October, as many as 10,000 people fill the stadium to watch prisoners ride bucking bulls, catch wild horses, and most notoriously, try to be the last one seated at a poker table while a bull stampedes toward them. Walton’s paintings are a sly nod to the voyeurism of this ludicrous tradition. In White Bull (2016), a spectrum of pinks in quick, painterly brushstrokes holds the subjects in space. The frenetic, choppy brushwork endows the work with energy and intensity. Other than a small amount of ground rendered at the bottom of the canvas, the subjects in the painting do not inhabit any recognizable world; instead, they seem to orbit in a pink atmosphere. Perhaps this acknowledges the dislocation of men in prison, who no longer live in the outside world. In the painting, a white bull—its face like one of the figures in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon—hovers, its hooves not yet sinking into the man below. There is tension in the depiction of both the man and the bull, rendered as flat shapes against the canvas, with few elements that suggest three dimensions: one leg depicted behind another leg, a hoof with a shadow. The tension of limited depth in the picture plane reminds the viewer that the painted mark is at once a thing in itself and the thing that it describes. We are looking both at the marks of the painting and at a depiction of the prisoners’ rodeo. We are voyeurs of this rodeo.

In Poker Face (2016), three men sit around a table, behind which looms a dark, hulking shape with horns and a tail. Walton’s rapid brushwork adds mass to the bull, evoking the prisoners’ tense wait for the stampeding, muscular beast. Short vertical strokes of bright pink create the space around the men and animal, conveying a frantic energy. One man in a purple hat turns away from the bull, his right arm raised as if to protect himself. The other two stiffly hold their arms in front of them, staring at their cards. For a person facing a life sentence in jail, the value of life changes. Perhaps the respect gained from being the bravest, the toughest to await the rampaging bull, is worth more than the injuries sustained. Though the prisoners choose to participate in the rodeo, perhaps they do so without regard for the danger due to the length of their sentences and little possibility for release. The rodeo exploits the inmates, especially the events like Convict Poker, depicted in Poker Face, that are only for Angola prisoners and are particularly dangerous.

Walton’s paintings reflect a deeply sarcastic tone, also apparent in the few sentences Walton wrote to describe the work: “I wanted to catch one of the perks of being on good behavior in the Louisiana prison system.”[2] If this is a perk, what must everyday life be like? Perhaps this is the heart of his series. The Angola Rodeo is a fifty-year-old tradition in which prisoners willingly endanger themselves for other people’s entertainment. Walton’s art is a form of entertainment, too. Are we, as voyeurs of this work, implicated in a larger system of exploitation? As citizens of the largest prison system in the world, how can we not be?[3]

John Isiah Walton: Rodeo is on view at The Front in New Orleans, through March 6, 2016.

[1] “Louisiana is the world’s prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly five times Iran’s, 13 times China’s, and 20 times Germany’s.” Cindy Chang, “Louisiana Is the World’s Prison Capital,” Times Picayune, May 13, 2012.

[2] “Shows, February 13–March 6, 2016,” The Front, http://www.nolafront.org/shows/2016-01-31-93.

[3] “The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration, with 2.2 million people currently in the nation’s prisons or jails—a 500% increase over the past thirty years.” From “Fact Sheet: Trends in U.S. Corrections,” The Sentencing Project, http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_Trends_in_Corrections_Fact_sheet.pdf. Accessed February 1, 2016.

It sounds like a riddle: No one can buy more of it, and few have enough of it; it wears on the rich and poor equally; loss of it produces deep fear. Time’s ability to be transferred and manipulated is at the heart of José Antonio Vega Macotela’s mixed-media series Time Divisa, part of which is on view at Longue View House and Gardens for Prospect.3. Throughout history, humanity has meted out punishment by taking away an individual’s time. Imprisonment is the physical demonstration of divided time. Macotela’s work provides an alternate source of time, a jailbreak of sorts.

Jose Antonio Vega Macotela. Time Exchange 331 (from Time Divisa), 2010; human hair and paper; 22 x 17 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Prospect.3.

Macotela trades his time with convicts held in Mexico City’s Santa Marta Acatitla Prison. On a specific day, a task requested by a prisoner is performed by the artist concurrently with the prisoner creating a work of art. “What they usually want me to do is to literally take their place in the outside world. I’ve visited the tombs of their brothers and said a few words. I’ve asked their fathers for forgiveness. I’ve gone dancing with their mothers. I’ve met their sons and acted as their father for a day. I’ve read a letter out loud to a dying relative in the hospital. One prisoner even asked me to go to his girlfriend’s house and watch her masturbate so that I could describe the scene for him, bit by bit.”[1]

Time Exchange 331 (2010) was made in exchange for Macotela spying on a prisoner’s ex-lover in the Zona Rosa in Mexico City. Made out of short, dark hairs from both the prisoner and his now-current lover, Time Exchange 331 depicts a map of the prison, with cell blocks surrounding a circular room. The extremely personal nature of the medium emphasizes the relationships that were formed from this project. The prisoner, “Eduardo,” used one of the few free commodities present in a prison—his own body—to create a work dictated by Macotela. The map of the prison is also a Poleana board, a board game played almost exclusively in prisons. The origin of the game is not clear, but some say it was introduced by Colombian narcotraffickers at Santa Martha Acatitla; others say it was adapted from a 1950s Parker Brothers game.[2] The board resembles the architecture of a prison, with the cells surrounding a circular main room, recalling Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. The composition of this game and of Time Exchange 331 depicts a prisoner’s conceptualization of power relations in prison and the fantasy of breaking out of that structure.

Jose Antonio Vega Macotela. Time Exchange 291 (from Time Divisa), 2009; intervened book; 8.27 x 6.3 x 4.72 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Prospect.3.

One of the greatest prison-break stories is Alexander Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. The main character, Edmond Dantès, reveals the prisoner’s mentality: “How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure.” Similarly, the prisoners in Santa Marta Acatitla prison have long periods of time to contemplate the outside world. In Exchange 291 (2009), Macotela exchanged time spent searching for a prisoner’s girlfriend for a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo in which the prisoner (“El Kamala”) used his hand to scratch a hole through the center of the novel; the work recalls Dantès’ own years-long attempt to escape by slowly digging through stone. But “Eel Kamala” is no fictional character. How much time does it take to scratch through 500 pages with a finger? Exchange 291 is a literal manifestation of a span of time spent detained, one longer than anyone might hope to experience.

The concept of trading time is a very old one. In the 12th century, the old or unable could use a proxy traveler to complete a religious pilgrimage. This tradition anticipates Macotela’s work and raises the possibility that the idea of time exchange is potentially an innate spiritual response to impairment. Macotela says, “Women would usually ask for favors dealing with faith, like asking me to crawl on my knees inside the Basílica de Guadalupe (one of the most revered churches in Mexico) to do penance on their behalf… It is as if they were looking for hope beyond the human realm, because the human realm is no longer within their reach.”[3] Prison walls may bind the physicality of individuals, but Macotela creates a (limited) transcendence of the corporeal and the opportunity to realize metaphysical desire.

[1] Antonio Vega Macotela, as told to Gabriella Gómez-Mont, “Mexican Rashes,” Vice Magazine, http://www.vice.com/read/mexican-rashes-137-v15n6. Accessed November 30, 2014.

[2] http://linvo.blogspot.com/2007/11/poleana-poliana.html. Accessed November 30, 2014.

[3] Antonio Vega Macotela, as told to Gabriella Gómez-Mont, “Mexican Rashes.” Vice Magazine, http://www.vice.com/read/mexican-rashes-137-v15n6. Accessed November 30, 2014.