Maggie Hazen & The Columbia Collective presents:

in collaboration with Girls Inc. of Greater Santa Barbara

@ MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation
July 28 - November 1, 2024

STATEMENT

_{by Sofia Thieu D’Amico}

^{Once upon the end of time, the dust of prison walls became the sands of childhood dreams.}

^{- world building sci-fi Influence: a world beyond time
- reimagining time, space, and physical matter
- challenging possibilities by renderings new spaces of healing
- architecture of liberation}

Maggie Hazen looked out through a window at Bedford Women’s Correctional Facility in New York, while visiting Columbia Collective artist Juste-A. Outside the window, she saw a playground surrounded by barbed wire: a playspace meant for the visiting children of mothers behind bars. While Juste-A herself is not a mother, two other of the young Columbia Collective artists are new moms. Responding to a world challenged by precarity and injustice, the Columbia Collective and Girls Inc. imagine spaces of play for themselves and for others, foregrounding creativity, possibility, recreation, and care.

THE COLUMBIA COLLECTIVE in_PLAYlandia project operates through the catalytic power of youth and play, which disarm aggressive technologies and architectures while offering a liberated future. The first historical playgrounds for children were created in the aftermath of World War II, from bombed-out building lots where children rebuilt their own play structures called “adventure playgrounds.” Similarly, the in_PLAYlandia project connects playground histories to future possibilities, and creative growth out of a post-prison ruin, with artists across geographies of freedom.

THE COLUMBIA COLLECTIVE in_PLAYlandia Project seeks to break down the boundaries between free and unfree space, by bridging connections for youth across different lived experiences, and in this way overcoming carceral barriers. In a workshop held in May, Girls Inc. members and Columbia Collective artists engaged in an artistic exchange around “dream playgrounds.” Columbia Collective artists visualized the ideas and prompts of Girls Inc. members and vice versa into distinctive playground designs. The resulting collaborative sketches were then digitally rendered by Hazen through an analog and digital collage process into a large-scale digital print, combining individual elements into a collective vision. The exhibition presented at the MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation, on view from July 27 to November 1, 2024, showcases several of the sketches as well as the final collage renderl, together a comprehensive presentation of the full design process.

The in_PLAYlandia Project channels the visions and ideas of children as our future leaders to reimagine space, and how their environments and activities reinforce or challenge traditional worldviews. Educating our youth about the moral and humanitarian crisis of our prison industrial complex can lead to greater empathy for children across the socio-economic spectrum, enabling youth to imagine a post-prison world and alternatives to punitive punishment that create togetherness and healing. The imaginations of youth and their creative coalitions can end the status quo of our society’s various cycles of harm.