Russell Craig

Russell Craig’s work features portraits of black Americans who have been directly impacted by mass incarceration and police violence. Craig uses the latent language of materials, including prison documents, leather bags, blood, and designer clothing to highlight issues of white supremacy and the attendant tension between the fetishization of Black culture and devaluation of nonwhite features and bodies.

Craig’s Eval features fragmented portraits of Black Americans killed by police, their features visible only in the contours of blood spatter on canvas. The Rorschach-like forms refer to both the psychological evaluations that Craig underwent during a childhood in foster care and the juvenile justice system, and to the trauma stemming from the violence and overcriminalization experienced by many communities of color. His Self-portrait is painted on paperwork that the artist accumulated over the seven years he spent navigating Pennsylvania’s prison system. This includes sentencing paperwork for a drug conviction, legal documents from his parole hearing and documentation of his transition into a Philadelphia halfway house. Craig describes the composition as evoking “crosshairs,” placing himself in the middle to simultaneously symbolize how black men are being targeted by the system, but also how they overcome these oppressive systems.

Russell Craig is a New York based artist whose work combines portraiture with deeply social and political themes. A self-taught artist who survived nearly a decade of incarceration after growing up in the foster care system, Craig creates art as a means to explore the experience of overcriminalized communities and reassert agency after a lifetime of institutional control. His work has been shown at the Philadelphia African American Museum, and included in group shows like Truth to Power, State Goods: Art in the Era of Mass Incarceration, HBO’s OG Experience, and is currently being shown at MoMA PS1. His work has garnered coverage in outlets including Artforum, ArtNews, ArtinAmerica, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, Artsy, The Guardian, and The New York Times. Craig is a 2017 Right of Return fellow, and a 2018 Ford Foundation: Art For Justice Fellow. He has also created numerous public art commissions with Mural Arts Philadelphia’s Restorative Justice Guild Program.