Maria Gaspar (lives and in Chicago) often works on site specific and
community-based projects. For the last ten years, issues of mass incarceration and Cook County jail in
Chicago, the largest single-site jail in the United States, have featured heavily in her art practice.
Gaspar’s works draw attention to the widespread impacts of incarceration in U.S. life, even as the
workings of the nation’s prisons, jails, and detention centers often remain invisible for many.
Click here for an interactive transcript of this interview
On the Border of What is Formless and Monstrous
On the Border of What Is Formless and Monstrous, 2016
Five-channel sound and video installation
Video: 14:52 minutes
Courtesy of the artist
This installation combines sound recordings made from inside and outside the Cook County Jail in Chicago,
the largest single-site jail in the country, with a slow video pan of the jail wall. The seemingly
endless expanse of gray cement is audibly punctuated by the joyful sounds of a carnival taking place on
one side of the wall, the buzz and thuds of metal gates opening and closing, and snippets of
conversation from inside the jail. In blending the sounds, Gaspar allows the imposing structure to
become briefly permeable and invites the viewer to imagine the experience of living alongside such a
structure. The work also draws attention to the often-overlooked but almost overwhelming scale and
presence of incarceration in the United States, with 2.2 million people in 1,833 state prisons, 110
federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,134 local jails, 218 immigration detention
facilities, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state
psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the US territories. In Gaspar’s words, “the carceral state is
everywhere.”
Maria Gaspar's work and clips from her interview are also featured in the following Barring Freedom study guides: Carceral Visuality, From the Inside Out
Biography
Maria Gaspar's projects have been supported by the Art for Justice Fund, the Robert Rauschenberg Artist
as Activist Fellowship, the Creative Capital Award, the Joan Mitchell Emerging Artist Grant, and the Art
Matters Foundation. Maria has received the Sor Juana Women of Achievement Award in Art and Activism from
the National Museum of Mexican Art, and the Chamberlain Award for Social Practice from the Headlands
Center for the Arts. Gaspar has lectured and exhibited extensively at venues including the Contemporary
Arts Museum, Houston, TX; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; the African American Museum,
Philadelphia, PA; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She is an Assistant Professor at
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, holds an MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Illinois
at Chicago, and a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.
Suggested Reading
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands = La Frontera: The New Mestiza. First edition. San
Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987.
Browne, Simone. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.
Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories, 2003.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th anniversary ed. New York:
Continuum, 2000.
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 2007.