Frieze Impact Prize Winners Announced

The Frieze Impact Prize, launched in partnership with the Art for Justice Fund and Endeavor Impact, recognizes artists contributing to the movement to end mass incarceration in the US and those directly impacted by the system.

The purpose of the Frieze Impact Prize is to expose the inequitable aspects of the criminal legal system and challenge its racial bias. Applications to the Frieze Impact Prize were open to U.S. based visual artists aged 18 or older, regardless of citizenship status, felony convictions, or formal training in art, with special consideration given to justice-involved artists.

The winners, Mary Baxter, Maria Gaspar and Dread Scott, have been selected by a jury comprising Agnes Gund (Chair, Art for Justice), Ari Emanuel (CEO, Endeavor), Bettina Korek (Chief Executive, Serpentine Galleries) and Pilar Tompkins Rivas (Chief Curator, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art). The winners each receive $25,000 for a work of art relating to the movement to end mass incarceration.

Baxter, Gaspar and Scott will present iterations of their winning artworks at the third edition of Frieze Los Angeles, February 17 – 20, 2022. Meet the artists and discover their work with short videos below.

Mary Baxter

Mary Baxter received the prize for her work Ain’t I a Woman, a multi-media installation comprised of audio, video and text, chronicling her life before, during and after incarceration. The work, in Baxter’s words, prompts the viewer to ‘reexamine present day laws, policies and procedures that compound the intersections of motherhood, reproductive justice, crime and punishment.’ Ain’t I Woman, she adds, ‘gives a face to the cruel and unusual punishment pregnant women undergo while incarcerated, utilizing solution-based storytelling and policy reform to articulate a shared vision for abolition.’

Maria Gaspar

Maria Gaspar was selected for her work Radioactive: Stories from Beyond the Wall. Using audio recordings and animations projected onto the exterior of a jail, the project aims to amplify the voices of incarcerated people, while also creating a channel of communication between those on the inside and those on the outside. The work, for which Gaspar worked with over 40 incarcerated people over the course of a year, examines the ways in which Black and Brown bodies are erased and illegitimized within the carceral state, while also highlighting the link between incarceration and neighborhoods, and the role of spatial justice in shaping how we see ourselves and our neighbors.

Dread Scott

Dread Scott was awarded the prize for Wanted, a multifaceted community-based project that addresses the criminalization of Black and Latinx youth in the US. The project includes public forums on the criminalization of youth and the creation of ‘Wanted’ posters for activities that aren’t illegal but for which police harass youth. To create the posters, Scott hosts a forensic sketch session during which adult ‘witnesses’ verbally describe youth ‘suspects’ to a composite sketch artist, with the resulting images then posted throughout Harlem. The project, for which Scott worked collaboratively with eight young adults whose lives were affected by police, seeks to raise awareness around the routine criminalization of Black and Latinx youth, identifying the process as a stepping stone to incarceration.