Arresting Patterns: Race and the Criminal Justice System brings together a group of artists who unearth overlooked patterns of racial disparity in the U.S. Criminal Justice system. The urgent need to explore indicators of intentional and unintentional discrimination comes to a fever pitch in the aftermath of the Ferguson verdict, the Baltimore riots, the police murder of Eric Garner, William K. Scott, and the state-sanctioned killing of hundreds of other Black, Brown and Indigenous people in the hands of the law. Centuries of structural inequity that is seen by some and invisible to others has produced collective outrage around the question of whether every citizen is protected equally under the law, and have led to a call for citizen participation in the shaping of law enforcement, policy, and reform. Artworks by Jamal Cyrus, Maria Gaspar, Titus Kaphar, Iyaba Ibo Mandingo, Adrian Piper, Tamms Ten Year, Dread Scott, and Andy Warhol employ serial repetition as a strategy for showcasing how one action, repeated over time, may accumulate, spread, or evolve into another form of its original self without detection.

The exhibition was co-curated with Titus Kaphar and attorney Leland Moore, and traveled to the African American Museum in Philadelphia, where it expanded to include Mary Dewitt, Theodore A. Harris, Avtomat Kalashnikova, Martine Sims, and Felandus Thames. View the AAMP installation.