Gallery Description

The gallery's ongoing work represents a historic and unprecedented set of collaborations between currently and formerly incarcerated people with members of the Boston University community. 

The two gallery components are outlined below. 

Featured Artists

 Currently and formerly incarcerated artists and activists we have featured and engaged with throughout this project.
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(You can learn about more artists using the artists tab at the top of the page.)

Original works & Responses

Original artworks responding to stories, conversations, and artworks of our featured artists in order ​to honor & illuminated their stories and reflect upon systems of injustice. 

​FEATURED COLLABORATORS

Click on each image to be taken to each artists' page, which features their bio and samples of their artistic work. 
from L-R: Wayland "X" Coleman, John Fifi, Amos Don, and BU students and incarcerated participants from a series of visits to a local jail.

"I’ve never lived in a world without racism. I’ve never lived in a world without prisons. I’ve never known an equal society and I’ve never known justice."
​- Wayland

I
by John Fifi

This poem was created in response to the prompt, "what kind of poem would I write to me?" 

​Haitian born, came to America at the age of 4 years old. I love dancing, ice skating, snowboarding, long boarding, cooking, and love writing!

Collective Response to "I" 
by RPJA Virtual Session Participants

RPJA participants engaged in a creative response to John Fifi's poem I, drawing upon words and phrases that caught our attention and continuing the poem. Utilizing those key words and phrases as a jumping off point, each participant wrote a short additional to the poem that continues the theme of, "what would I write to myself?". 
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My Cages...Why sing? 
by Jose Fortunato Fernandes

As the theme of the Race, Prison, Justice Arts project was "Why the caged bird sings?", what sparked my creation was an activity utilizing paper masks, which led me to think about what my cages were. I related them to relationships. Relationships can be healthy or unhealthy, including with ourselves. The poem "My cages... why sing?" expresses some of my cages and tries to find reasons to sing within myself.

​I am a professor at Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Brazil, and I have been working with music education and social inclusion through teaching, researching and projects inside prisons. Alongside these activities, every year some music students and I have been putting on a singing concert focused on a different foreign language.

Changes Starts with You 
​​by Rebecca Bartholomew

​A poem I wrote and image I traced inspired by our class and "why the caged bird sings."
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A Jail Bird's Song 
​by John Fifi

Haitian born, came to America at the age of 4 years old. I love dancing, ice skating, snowboarding, long boarding, cooking, and love writing!

​Here's Why
​(The Caged Bird Sings)
​by John "Science" Moore

I love Maya Angelou's poem and wanted to add to it.

Feel free to reach out with any encouragement at [email protected] or [email protected].

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When Apple Trees Produce Oranges
by Amos Don

Amos submitted this poem specially for inclusion in this year's gallery. 

Amos is currently incarcerated at MCI Norfolk and you can learn more about him and his other works of poetry on his artist's page, here. ​​

Masks on the theme,
​Why the Caged Bird Sings

BU’s Race, Prison, Justice Arts Project brings together student artists with incarcerated individuals to share in  music, theater, spoken word, movement, visual art, and other creative works and to work collaboratively to explore story telling through various artistic mediums. The BU Prison Arts project believes in the power of the arts to build community and understanding, express and affirm identity, and to cultivate joy and meaningful connection. 

​As we explored “Why the Caged Bird Sings," each participant created a mask to represent a time in their lives when they needed to hide a part of themselves. The mask represents where they have been a place or collection of times when they've felt caged. As we worked with elements of theater and movement, we began to use the act of taking off the mask as a step towards freeing ourselves and our world. 
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As we discussed the work of freeing ourselves and each other from self-imposed masks and those imposed upon us by outer systems, expectations, norms, and the violence and brutality of our world, we imagined a new world and created a second mask to represent the freedom song our caged bird sings. These masks are a vision of where we want to be, a vision for our collective futures.
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Beyond the Cage
by Nicole Ensmann

A response to our theme. 

Frantz Saint Louis 
​​by Thomas Banguela

This is a picture of me now and in the future. A bold, strong, and confident manifestation of who I am.

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Fly High 
​by Gabriella Lopez

​Hector was a student of the empowering song class in the fall of 2022 and created this work as part of a culminating project on the theme of One Sky, Many Destinies.
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​Hector is currently incarcerated at MCI Norfolk.

Death to a Flower
by John Fifi 

 Haitian born, came to America at the age of 4 years old. I love dancing, ice skating, snowboarding, long boarding, cooking, and love writing!

Banana Me 
by Science

True feelings from a man who has never written content for public viewing. Soon to be known - in television, movies, and books.

Feel free to reach out with any encouragement at [email protected] or [email protected].

Angelou Responses
by Fallon Murphy

The first poem is an attempt to imagine the environment of Angelou's poem. I read the physical space of Angelou's poem as an extension of human, capitalistic norms. How can we see the environment structuring the binaries of freedom and agency that she represents?

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​The second poem is a series of questions that Angelou's poems elucidate for me on the importance of the listener, the community, in performing a freedom song. Angelou makes a very interesting argument about freedom. Even though the unclipped bird is free in the capitalist sense, the speaker in Angelou's poem does not suggest that the unclipped bird is engaged with the world. Agency, in the poem, is expressed by the clipped bird, it seems to come through the very struggle of singing despite the environment.

​"I think that I am made of imagination. I see everything as art."
-Wayland

Untitled
​by Winta Mamo

Reviving... Please Stand By 
​by John Fifi

 Haitian born, came to America at the age of 4 years old. I love dancing, ice skating, snowboarding, long boarding, cooking, and love writing!

30 Birds
by Orest

30 Birds was written as an alternative perspective writing piece years ago that I returned to in order to revamp the poem with some new themes after our visits.

Once Lost 
​by Derek "Science" Moore

True feelings from a man who has never written content for public viewing. Soon to be known - in television, movies, and books.Feel free to reach out with any encouragement at [email protected] or [email protected].
(Click photos to enlarge) 

"Where politics and media often present socially accepted narratives regarding the marginalized, empowering song gave us tools, music, our poetry, etc., and dared us to defy those narratives by telling our own stories in a way that matters."
​- Wayland

Empowered by Song and Word 
by Justin Ouellet 


This multi-faceted work rooted around spoken word  explores the work we carried out during our in person course. It is also a focus on self-reflection and reaction to the apparent disparities within the prison system, and the interactions with those who are or were incarcerated. It was crucial that I composed a work as my final project that honored the power of spoken word, poetry and song, and paying homage to the incarcerated persons we met in a local prison 

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Wadankayga
​by Ismail Mohamad

This song is called Wadankayga, meaning my country. I miss my country and that is why I wrote this song.

Caged Bird Reflections
​by Mary L. Cohen

These works were created in response to various artistic prompts and conversations with guests in the Race, Prison, Justice Arts Virtual spring sessions. 

The Violinist
​by John Fifi

Haitian born, came to America at the age of 4 years old. I love dancing, ice skating, snowboarding, long boarding, cooking, and love writing!

Everlast 
​by Universe

This poem was made to motivate one to higher heights within themselves to accomplish the extraordinary. I am a person who loves to inspire. I believe in connecting with one another and I live to be alive.

(Scroll to see additional pages)

Pluto 
by Orest 

I wrote Pluto due to the influence of the Stevie Wonder song (Saturn) and some of his subsequent albums (Songs In The Key of Life, Innervisions, etc). I wanted to draw emphasis to the perspective I gained during our visits and the shared experiences of others.

Winner 
by Erick Mariona

Untitled Drawing 
by John Fifi

"I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free" Response
by Fallon Murphy

Responding to the questions of the brilliant Nina Simone and this particular performance of Billy Taylor's song, "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free."

Remembering Our Future
by John Fifi 

Haitian born, came to America at the age of 4 years old. I love dancing, ice skating, snowboarding, long boarding, cooking, and love writing!

Our Song Bird Sings
Collective poem by RPJA Participants in response to The Caged Bird by Maya Angelou

What if we imagined "The Caged Bird" poem as unfinished... what might the next line of the poem be? Each line is a contribution from BU student participants and currently incarcerated participants. 

Who am I statements

 As we engaged in the work of Race, Prison, Justice Arts, we asked our participants to position themselves in relationship to race and incarceration. We prompted our student participants to capture any aspect of their relationship, understanding, or experience with the carceral state as it intersects with race and/or other aspects of their identity. Below are submissions from several participants as well as a reflection from one of our key collaborators, Wayland.