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Photographing the Community on Tennessee’s Death Row

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From 2010 to 2015 I was incarcerated in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the Tennessee prison that houses death row for the men’s system. On one side of a gate, 250 of us lived in a “support staff” unit working maintenance, landscaping, kitchen service or whatever else kept the facility operational. On the other side of the gate were maximum-security prisoners and those in protective custody, and a unit just for the condemned.
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'Last Meals', a series of oil paintings by death penalty artist Kate MacDonald

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"Last Meals is a continuing series of paintings that juxtaposes the monstrousness of capital punishment with our own fascination in the final requests of the condemned.

"I found groupings of leftover meals poignantly underline the humanity of the executed, while alluding to the terrible finality of their sentences. Originally conceived to participate in the Texas Moratorium Network’s exhibit Justice For All? Artists Reflect on the Death Penalty, the first painting of the series, Last Meal: Ruben Cantu, has been shown at galleries in Austin and Houston, TX, as well as the Texas State Capitol Building. Further paintings in the series have been exhibited in Vancouver, BC; San Francisco, CA; Hartford, CT; and Ashland, OH.

"Examples chosen for illustration in this series inform the viewer of various injustices surrounding the issue of capital punishment. These include mental health and lack of advocacy, racial discrimination, poverty, and at the issue's most basic argument, the possible innocence of the executed; while the leftover table scraps relate the humanity of the condemned to our own ordinary experience."




Above: "Last Meal: Ruben Cantu" - Oil on canvas, 24x20 in NFS. Ruben Cantu was 17 at the time of the offence for which he was wrongly convicted. “My name is Ruben M. Cantu and I am only 18 years old. I got to the 9th grade and I have been framed in a capital murder case." Ruben Cantu's meal consisted of barbecue chicken, brown rice, refried beans and sweet tea. His request for bubble gum was denied. Oil painting by death penalty artist Kate MacDonald.


Related article:
australia: city billboard offers taste of death row
Apr 15, 2009
it is, in fact, the last meal ordered and eaten by larry hayes before he was given a lethal injection by texan authorities on september 10, 2003. which makes the request for those 2 diet cokes bizarre: was it just for the taste of it? ...
http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/
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Photographing the Community on Tennessee’s Death Row

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From 2010 to 2015 I was incarcerated in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the Tennessee prison that houses death row for the men’s system. On one side of a gate, 250 of us lived in a “support staff” unit working maintenance, landscaping, kitchen service or whatever else kept the facility operational. On the other side of the gate were maximum-security prisoners and those in protective custody, and a unit just for the condemned.
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