An exhibition that takes on the US penal system opens on Tuesday, 26 July, on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, the site of the notorious former federal prison.
Shortening: Making Irrational Rational (until 15 January 2017) features the work of the artist Nelson Saiers, who has a doctorate in mathematics and incorporates the field into his work. Saiers has chosen a unique material to addresses the country’s correctional problem: American football ephemera. The artist’s chosen material is based on the prison slang for long sentences, “football numbers”, said to refer to the double-digit numerals on players’ uniforms.
The show opens with a hanging ten by eight-foot piece of astro-turf painted with the number three, referencing both the 30-yard line on a football field and the irrational number Pi, stripped down to the integer three and thus made rational. “I’m a mathematician, so I like things that are very just. I like a basic reason there,” Saiers says. He adds that he hopes the show makes people ask: “How do we think about [social issues] more rationally?”
In another work, 100 football jerseys that Saiers purchased online have been pinned to hemp rope, and the large scale of the piece is meant to express the length of prison sentences. Some of the jerseys have site-specific historical references, such as the nod through a Chicago Bears jersey to the infamous Alcatraz inmate Al Capone.
Alcatraz’s history is also explored in references to the historical—and ongoing—injustice towards Native Americans and their activism. The island was occupied by the Indians of All Tribes from November 1969 to June 1971, since, as disused federal land, it should have been returned to native people according to the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. For instance, the derogatory term “Redskins” has been covered up on a jersey of the eponymous Washington, DC team.
In the socially conscious spirit of the installation, Saiers decided to forego the typical exclusive opening hoopla to be “a little more egalitarian”. “I wanted the public to get to see it first,” he explains. Instead, plans are in the works for an artist talk to be held in mid-September, during which Saiers is “most likely going to add 30 or 40 more [jerseys]”, he says.
