Ashley Hunt (based in Los Angeles) is both an artist and activist. Over the last 20 years, he has dedicated his socially-engaged art practice to documenting the expansion of the U.S. prison system. While tracing the proliferation of prisons across the nation, Hunt also explores how people fail to see the extent of incarceration’s impact.
Ashley Hunt is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles, where he is faculty at the California Institute of the Arts. In works including Corrections Documentary Project (2001–10), Prison Maps (2002), A World Map in Which We See… (2004–07), Notes on the Emptying of a City (2006–10), and Degrees of Visibility (2010–present), Hunt works in dialogue with movement-building and grassroots organizations, including Critical Resistance, the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Citizens for Quality Education, Southerners on New Ground, and Friends and Family of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children. His works have shown in venues ranging from community centers to prisons to museums, including Pitzer Art Galleries, CA; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Project Row Houses, Houston; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Tate Modern, London; Documenta 12, Germany, and Sinopale Biennial, Turkey. His writings include the book, Notes on the Emptying of a City, and have appeared in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice; X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
