ROY presents: Aimee Wissman

To Lay and Lie It Down

Since my release from prison, now three years ago, the work I make is slowly changing, in the way that it should. I’m being driven by a longing for justice, a need to make something come from my/your/our trauma, and to be (perhaps) released in the making.

I use a variety of materials, but my first interest is in the surface. Through working things over, sometimes furiously, almost always over long stretches of time, I create a sense of depth and spectacle. The surface, the micro to macro of the painting, is one way I’ve learned to talk about all the little details of something like mass incarceration. 

I frequently use a symbolic language to talk about erasure, dehumanization, and oppression. Uniforms, numbers, chains, razor wire, interior/exterior carceral spaces, collide with bridges, trains, tunnels, and parks. I see no difference in the construction and I see many similarities in intent.  

The figurative work dives deeper: body as raw material, our enslavement to capitalism and carceral states, and finally, the body’s return to dust, to brick, to block, to stone. 

ROY asks

1. What is your name and preferred pronouns?

Aimee Wissman, she/her/hers

2. How has art, (whether it be your or art in general) changed you?

I don’t know if making artwork has changed me, but it is such an integral part of my daily routine that I cannot imagine my life without it. Art has given me surfaces for expression, healing, and grappling with my lived experiences. Art has given me a title, a purpose, and a pathway forward. Art returned me to my voice, my power, and my passion for advocacy. In short, it has become my life’s work, my mental health practice, and the keystone of my efforts to build community for currently and formerly incarcerated artists.

3. How did you start your artistic practice?

I began my artistic practice in Ohio’s maximum security prison for women. In spaces of trauma, confinement, and disconnection I found myself reaching for the tools for self-expression, I taught myself to draw and paint over the course of five years inside, and now 3 “at home.” My practice relies heavily on experimentation, material concerns, surface obsession, and the interconnected narratives of racism, sexism, mass incarceration, privilege, community creation and destruction, addiction, homelessness, and mental health issues.

4. When a first-time viewer sees your work, what is the first word that you hope they think when looking at it?

I hope that the viewer finds as much joy in the surface of these works as I do, and that when they explore what lurks beyond the scope of mark marking and materials, when they get down to the meaning and feeling, that they will find themselves confronted, challenged, and ignited. That these works will cry out “Justice Now” and the viewer will echo the call, empowered to do more, to pay attention, and to rise.