ALABAMA: Sweat Shop

"ALABAMA: Sweat Shop" acrylic on heavy watercolor paper) examines the state’s controversial prison-labor system, where incarcerated people perform work for public agencies and private industries—some represented in the artwork—for little or no pay. Despite Alabama’s 2022 constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, critics argue that punitive consequences for refusing work make the system coercive. The piece also confronts the racial inequities embedded in incarceration, connecting present-day prison labor to the legacy of post–Civil War forced labor and calling attention to demands for fair pay, voluntary participation, and worker protections.