Sable Elyse Smith

Credible Messenger. Sable Elyse Smith is a Credible Messenger. Part of the lexicon of people who work in prisons, the term describes someone who knows personally, intimate­ly, the tolls of time behind the walls. Sable ain’t done no prison bid but has spent near two-thirds of her life visiting her father in California prisons. That ­experience—a part of what binds us, though we’ve spent no more than a few hours ­together—has informed and inspired her lauded inter­disciplinary work. It’s art that interrogates the albatross too often generalized into the vacuous language of mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex. Art that invites, if not requires, us to reflect on the humanity of both the imprisoned and the imprisoners. Art that questions whether we need prison at all. Sable’s work has earned forums in some of the world’s most prestigious venues: the Guggenheim Museum in 2018 (Coloring Book 9), the 2022 Whitney Biennial (A Clockwork), and the 2022 Venice Biennial (Landscape series) among them. My fellow West Coast native is one of the carceral state’s most important critics.

Jackson is an author