LANGSTON ALLSTON with YOUNG ARTISTS MOVEMENT (YAM)

Together, Towards Freedom. 2022. Acrylic paint on wood.

Together, Towards Freedom is a mural created by lead artist Langston Allston and twelve young artists from the YAM team. The mural depicts the harm of incarceration and the reimagining of a brighter future. Seen throughout the mural are messages of youth experiences in their day to day lives, and the history from which these issues are rooted. The first panel of the mural represents the slave trade, the beginning of the United States’ brutal policies, then transitions into a depiction of the terror and distrust that police and prisons inflict upon our communities today. Here people are fleeing police, followed by the stark landscape of a prison.

This bleak imagery is interrupted by an embrace, meant to show the power of community care. Behind this embrace, the same prison is now crumbling and overgrown. The next three pink panels illustrate a world being carved out of the rubble of the prison, with overgrowth turning into a flowering garden that can support a community. Woodcuts from the youth artists are placed throughout the piece to underscore specific historical moments. These moments are shared to showcase what brought our society here, and specific steps which can help to escape the current structures. The process of arriving at this design has taken several different forms. The YAM team started by drawing and discussing how they wanted to portray a world without prisons. Artists elected to create a narrative arc that brought viewers from the roots of the prison system into a future without it. To that end, the mural begins in the dark of night and concludes with the sun setting on a new day.