MIAMI — A Florida art exhibit expressing prison abolition messages was taken down days after it opened — only to be the target of repeated vandalism. Last fall, members of Solidarity with Florida Prisoners (FPS), along with University of Florida (UF) art students and MFA candidates, were invited by 4Most Gallery to create a new iteration of a show that had already debuted in Tampa and Orlando from 2019. Burn It Down: Resistance Communications featured prisoner artwork and letters, workshops, installations, and discussions about the Florida prison system. The show had its opening reception on March 10 in Gainesville. There was an altar setup like tribute to activist Karen Smith, who was a beloved founder of FPS and passed away in 2020, and banners with the words “ABOLISH PRISONS”, “ABOLISH THE POLICE” and “END PRISON SLAVERY” hung outside on the roof of the gallery. About 100 people from the community showed up at the opening.
4Most is the off-campus gallery for UF’s School of Art and Art History, featuring work by students and the local community. Florida Prisoner Solidarity is “a prison abolitionist collective” focused on “the needs of all incarcerated people, their care networks, and the people in the community who support them,” as stated on the group’s website. website.
On March 13, retired journalist and Gainesville resident Ron Cunningham, who was riding his bike and saw the banners, posted about the exhibit on his blog, Free CNG. “It struck me as quite a brave display by the faculty and students whose university is increasingly under the authoritarian thumb of The DeSanitizer,” Cunningham wrote, referring to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. . “Congratulations on this kind of rare courage. If art isn’t a form of revolution, it’s nothing.
Two days later, on March 15, the banners fell. UF had received a request for comment from a local newspaper, The Chronicle of Alachua, who deemed the artwork “anti-police,” and someone had sent an anonymous tip to the University of Florida Police Department. A UF administrator then called the curator, Kayla Burnett, and asked them to remove them.
“They told me the problem with the exhibit was that it looked like the University of Florida was saying these things,” said Burnett, a UF alumnus who works at the gallery. Hyperallergic. “So the administration ultimately decided to remove them because they didn’t want others to think it was UF speech instead of the artists who suspended them.”
After the banners were taken down, UF College of Arts Dean Onye Ozuzu and college principal Elizabeth Ross met with the group of artists and activists to work together.
“They said the way the banners were displayed made it look like UF was saying these things instead of being a work of art,” said an artist on the show who requested anonymity.. “But we don’t need to impress on everyone that the gallery is an art building, and if they really want to work with us, put the banners up first, and then we can have a conversation. .”
After this incident, the artists decided to close the gallery to reorganize the exhibition and include censorship as a theme. Workshops were held in the space and they planned to reopen for a closing reception on March 29.
But on the morning of March 28, four stones were thrown at the windows of the gallery.
This incident of vandalism is not an isolated event. In the span of a year in the city of Gainesville, several murals advocating various social justice causes were defaced, with the Institute of Black CultureTHE pride center, And Planned parenthood among the targeted people. last fall, leaflets bearing anti-Semitic and white supremacist messages were distributed anonymously.
“I think what DeSantis has done with academia and the state of Florida in general has made it very scary to be political,” Burnett said. Hyperallergic. “This exhibition had already taken place two years ago in the same gallery. The fact that it was not protested and vandalized then, compared to now, says a lot about what is happening in the state of Florida.
In response to HyperallergicIn her request for comment, UF spokeswoman Cynthia Roldán stressed that UF is committed to freedom of expression but must keep students and the community safe.
“One of the ways we do this is to make it clear that the positions and perspectives of students, scholars, artists, lecturers, faculty, etc. that are presented on our platforms do not represent those of the College of Arts. or the University of Florida,” Roldán said. “This clarity is intended to foster artists’ free expression and an open exchange of ideas, where diverse perspectives intersect in an environment that optimizes learning.” Roldán said added that the artists and curator had not requested permission to install artwork on the roof and exterior walls as required.
Following the incident, the participating artists decided to gut the entire show and leave only the themes of censorship and vandalism as part of the closing reception pieces, as well as the banners outside the gallery. Inside the space, part of an FPS statement read, “Fascists can throw stones, but they are just pebbles against the abolitionist movement. Solidarity forever.
The gallery’s windows had been boarded up after being vandalized, and overnight someone spray-painted the words “Fuck off fascists” on the signs in response to the bullying. An hour before the reception, as the artists stood outside, a UF administrator hung a sign with an arrow pointing to the spray-painted message that read “THIS IS THE ARTISTS SPEECH, NOT THE SPEECH FROM THE UF”.
On Tuesday, April 11, the windows were smashed a second time, when the show was already over and the gallery was empty.
In recent weeks, the Florida State Legislature introduced a bill, HB 999censor academic DEIA, gender and queer studies – the latest effort to pass extreme conservative legislation introduced by state Republicans and supported by Governor DeSantis after the “don’t say gay“law and”Stop the wake up act.” At the University of Florida, DeSantis named three new board members in 2021. The Independent Alligator reported last year that the school Honors Program Director was fired without explanation. In February, DeSantis named Republican Party donor Patrick Zalupski to the blackboard. The school also named a new conservative president, former senator and businessman Ben Sasse, who was opposite by teachers and students who protested his selection.
Meghan Moe Beitiks, an assistant professor in the theater department at Concordia University in Montreal who taught at UF for three years as a studio art lecturer starting in 2018, said she was not not surprised by the vandalism.
“I would have liked to see more explicit school support for artists and curators,” Beitiks said. Hyperallergic. “To see that they understood that a lot of art historically blurs the line between art and life, that a lot of art challenges people and makes them feel uncomfortable, demands a better world.”
“It’s arguably an essential part of what art does and how it works,” Beitiks continued. “If your artists are making people uncomfortable with their calls for needed change, this is an opening for a moment of education and conversation. Now is not the time to backtrack or reconfigure things. .
Lexus Shambria Giles, artist and MFA candidate at UF, said that although professors told students the new bill would not affect them, censorship followed by vandalism at the gallery suggests otherwise.
“There have been so many protests on campus dealing with the new university president, the abortion ban and others,” Giles said. Hyperallergic.
“I want my comrades to know that now is the time to fight back,” she added. “I think it’s important for everyone to stick together rather than play the blame game. It’s sad that we have to tiptoe as artists or create fictionalized works of art as the world around us burns in flames.
