JEFF + KORINA with C FAUSTO

Braided

Mixed media installation, featuring C. Fausto Cabrera

Three years ago, artist and law student Jeffery Young spoke with community collaborator Korina Barry (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe), on their three-part podcast, Subject to Monitor, about decolonial healing from trauma.

Their discussions were based on an understanding of epigenetics, the study of how one’s environment and experiences can alter the expression of one’s genes, alterations which are then passed onto future generations.

To physically represent the concept, Korina took up welding. With the support of Heather Doyle of Chicago Fire Arts Center, Korina welded a double helix made out of streamlined copper pipe — including pieces of scrap copper stamped with present and historical factors that have impacted Korina and Jeff’s genes, and countless others, which are then welded to one side of the helix. The other side of the helix is wrapped in braids of sweetgrass, representing the healing both are doing for themselves and generations to come.

On Subject to Monitor, Jeff and Korina also talked about memorial tattoos as an act of healing the wounds carried in our blood, a way for families and communities to grieve and mourn someone we love, through art and on our bodies. “If we’re not actively leaning into the grieving and mourning, we block healing in our blood memory,” Korina notes. Inking your body is a ceremony, a small sacrifice to carry your loved one with you, and in doing so, tattooing a salve on your own body’s memory.

Multimedia artist C. Fausto Cabrera came home from years of incarceration in 2024 and joined the conversation. Inspired by the People’s Paper Co-op, C. Fausto processed paperwork from prison, creating the canvas for his own “memorial tattoos”–a piece titled Inherited Scars: “We ink our bodies to allow some of the beautiful pains we carry within to bleed to the surface,” he says. C. Fausto used his and fellow-artist-Fresh’s kites and receipts from behind bars, incorporated braided sweetgrass into the pulp, and used tattoo ink to draw portraits of the six artists in SEEN who are still incarcerated. The ten canvases are arranged in the undulating form of a double helix; Jeff’s portrait is at the end of the strand.

Viewers are invited to upload images of their own memorial tattoos on Instagram and Facebook and tag We Are All Criminals (@weareallcriminals). Submissions will be selected for the rotating virtual display on view in the gallery.

ABOUT SEEN @ WAM

SEEN is a WAAC exhibition featuring currently incarcerated artists, activists, and students in collaboration with artists, activists, and academics in the Twin Cities community who together explore issues of incarceration, isolation, healing, and coming home.

Representing a range of cultural, personal, and professional backgrounds and diverse forms of artistic expression, people on the “inside” partnered with people on the “outside” on the basis of creative curiosities and personal affinities. This exhibition is laid out across two galleries that evoke the “inside,” carceral (east) and “outside,” healing and community (west) experiences.

The seven-installation exhibit works to stretch the bounds of the museum as a site for community engagement and critical examination of American carceral institutions.

Teams have worked together to better understand and explore carceral isolation and trauma and the many ways it has caused generational harm in their own bodies and those of their descendants. To bring healing to the cycle of harm, they connect their families, the community, and even themselves, through this exhibition thoughtfully curated with cacophony and quiet, isolation and community, criticism and celebration.

IN CONVERSATION WITH JEFF AND KORINA

Subject to Monitor: In Conversation with Jeff and Korina is an ongoing conversation about trauma, grief, and healing between Jeff Young and Korina Barry. Subject to Monitor, parts two and three, are made possible with support from the Minnesota Humanities Center. The conversation will continue with support from the Weisman Art Museum.

Part one of the conversation was made possible with help from the Cedar Cultural Center and curator Ritika Ganguly. Tune in below.

Opening Day photos by Jayme Halbritter

Meet the Artists

Jeff Young

Jeffery L. Young is a 3L student at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, studying as one of the first two incarcerated people in the US to attend law school. He has a Social Science Education degree with a minor in English from Grambling State University, where he served as president of the Iota Tau chapter of Kappa Delta Pi International Honor Society and was inducted into the Golden Key National Honor Society. Jeff was also one of the first incarcerated people in the country to complete a Masters-level course in Clinical Pastoral Education with a focus on narrative therapy at Allina Health CPE. He has received training in trauma, interpersonal relationships, and leadership from the Power of People Leadership Institute (POPLI) and for more than fifteen years, Jeff has facilitated restorative justice, anger management, conflict resolution and other cognitive behavioral therapy classes.

He developed his writing expertise while an opinion columnist for the MN Spokesman-Recorder, a journalist and editor for The Prison Mirror, and a participant in the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. He has received national recognition for his journalistic, memoir, and fiction work.

Jeff’s interests include neurology, jazz, hip-hop, and the History Channel’s “Built America” series. He won’t turn down a good peach cobbler pie.

Korina Barry

Korina Barry is a citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. She is a mother, organizer, advocate, and certified doula. She worked in the area of Indian Child Welfare as a social worker for nearly 15 years. She has experience in public policy, partnership and coalition building, grassroots movement and campaign management. She is currently NDN’s Action Managing Director.

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Child Psychology and American Indian Studies and Master’s of Social Work degree from the University of Minnesota.

C Fausto Cabrera

C Fausto Cabrera, recently released from 21 years of incarceration, is a Writing Freedom Fellow through Haymarket Books and The Arts for Justice Fund. He is a multi-genre artist always probing the parameters of his cage.

Inspired by a conversation between Korina and Jeff, Cabrera created this piece hoping to articulate the undeniability of how the arts contribute to the elasticity of the human soul. “There is a third space created when artists collaborate & speak to the audience in a way that binds us in the human condition. A place where behavior & genetics coexist to present a different language–something to speak to the complications of how we heal from the shit we do to each other. It’s an honor to take the destructive nature of my past and draw from it in order to repurpose a future.”