Art for advocacy
‘Open Letters’ project and CAMH exhibit tell stories of death row inmates
It all started with a news headline. It was back in 2013, and the Lone Star State had just hit a morbid milestone, executing its 500th inmate in the modern era of capital punishment.
Mark Menjivar, then living in San Antonio, saw the story forwarded by a friend, and it shook him. So he started exploring the topic, reading more and figuring out how to fashion the darkest parts of criminal justice into meaningful art. Now, five years later, he’s done a handful of projects, exhibitions and displays about capital punishment.
Most recently, he’s completed a pair of archival pieces, including one currently on display in the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston exhibit “Walls Turned Sideways.” That piece, “DLP,” is a photographic ode to a death row inmate who’s since been executed. Mounted on the wall below a listing of items, the piece shows all of the objects left behind in condemned killer David Lee Powell’s cell after his 2012 execution.
As a complement to that, Menjivar also put on a one-night artistic event, dubbed “Open Letters.” There, to a small crowd at Rothko Chapel, the San Antonio-based artist read a letter from a current death row prisoner — Rickey Cummings. Afterward, he asked the audience to respond, discuss and share feedback in a recorded conversation he had transcribed and sent to Cummings.
While he works to replicate the Open Letters project elsewhere in the coming months, Menjivar took time to talk with the Chronicle about the art event and the news stories behind it.
Q: So first of all, what got you started on the path to this project?
A: The thing that really started it for me was when in 2013 the state of Texas executed its 500th person. I was just really shocked and moved by that number, and I had two young sons and it was like, “How do I explain capital punishment to them?” And I had a lot of questions — but I didn’t feel like I knew a lot about it.
So I reached out to the International School of the Americas and started working with 30 high school students for one year and really looking at capital punishment from diverse perspectives.
Q: But it was a few more years before you actually got started on what became your latest project — and I understand this part of the story involves some inspiration from Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Elsa Alcala?
A: It does. There was an article in the Austin American-Statesman in 2015 that quoted her basically saying that she was really troubled by capital punishment in the state of Texas. Sorry, it was in 2016 — and in the end of the article, there was a quote where she said she would just deal with cases as they come but that she wouldn’t let any political pressure influence her in any way, and she said she wanted, basically, for people to think about the death penalty because it’s complicated and requires deeper thought.
That article kind of really spurred me on to jump back in, and that’s when I reached out to the Texas After Violence Project, and I’m actually an artist-inresidence with them.
Q: And in the course of all this, you developed two archival projects, including the one on display at CAMH — can you tell me about those?
A: “The Execution Files” has over 900 execution files for everybody on death row from 1922 to 1985, and they were compiled for a book, “The Rope, The Chair, The Needle.” And I have created a traveling exhibition from that archive.
And the second is the Powell cell. It’s a kind of portrait of David, if you think of an unconventional portrait of somebody. You can see the things David lived with for 32 years — he’s the longest person to be on death row that’s been executed.
Q: How did all that lead up to the Rothko Chapel event?
A: As I was spending time with these objects of people who had been executed, the question that came into my head was: What would these people say if they were still with us?
I quickly realized we have over 200 people currently on death row — so I wrote prisoners on death row and asked them to write open letters to the public.
Q: Have you gotten feedback from victims’ families?
A: I have not. My intent is not in any way to be disrespectful to victims’ families and the trauma that they’ve experienced. But I think that that is separate from the execution and what happens there.
Q: In the years that you’ve been doing this capital punishment-focused work, have you seen any shift in public attitudes toward it or level of interest in it?
A: I’m an artist — I’m not a survey taker or politician. I find that most of the time when I talk to people, I find that they haven’t thought that deeply about it.
Q: What, of the things you’ve learned in looking at the death penalty, has surprised you the most?
A: One of the most surprising things about writing with individuals on death row was realizing how complex their lives are — Rickey and I have exchanged probably four different letters just about patriarchy and what does it mean to be a male in society and to raise boys in society. Those were not the kind of conversations I was expecting to be having.