B + EMILY
WE CAN’T HEAR OURSELVES SING
We Can’t Hear Ourselves Sing
mixed media installation
Inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar’s 1899 poem “Sympathy,” which proclaimed “I know why the caged bird sings,” musician, visual artist, and poet B Batchelor adapted the poem to a massive visual installation — a collection of bird cages comprising a looming chandelier from which B’s poetry emanates.
Originally written about the oppressive experience of being Black in America, B assigns new meaning to Dunbar’s poem through comparison of the cage to the American prison system, in which Black adults are incarcerated at five times the rate of white adults and the cacophony of prison life effects all caged inside.
Standing under the fifty-cage chandelier, one can make out a diversity of voices, all reciting B’s poem We Can’t Hear Ourselves Sing. One must focus on an individual voice to hear the full poem, which Batchelor describes as “humanity straining to sing” out from “the chaos of noise.”
We Can't Hear Ourselves Sing (solo)
We Can't Hear Ourselves Sing (cacophany)
Opening Day photos by Jayme Halbritter
Cellist Rebecca Merblum’s Mirrored Sound, composed after a visit to SEEN.
Mirrored Sound (2025)
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.
Meet the Artists
B Batchelor
B Batchelor is a poet, musician, and visual artist interested in exploring how art reflects community.
Emily Baxter
Emily Baxter is an attorney, activist, and photographer, working with individuals, families, communities, and national organizations to highlight injustices and amplify the voices and stories of people most impacted by our criminal legal system.