(hip-hop music) - I wanna start big picture and ask you what it means to have this show on view in a moment where there have been many conversations about racial reconciliation, healing, abolition, and mass incarceration?

- To think about having this particular show about my brother in a courthouse, attached to a functioning correctional facility, it's like, damn, that's a lot.

- There's a through line there.

- Yeah, yeah.

Although Canaan will tell us that we know nothing of what it's like to be in prison emotionally and mentally I'm tethered to him.

- We are in front of a work that features letters from your brother.

- One of the pieces is a 24 by 30-inch silk quilt and on top of it sits the property box that was mailed from Virginia Beach city jail.

This quilt it's personified as me, I'm holding his belongings and maintaining the value.

And thinking about all that is stripped from those who were incarcerated and how important these belongings might've been.

So for me, creating something of value to hold his valuables.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And then just thinking of another way to introduce my brother into this space, but also our relationship in the vein of frozen moments in time that captured the best parts of our childhood.

(jazzy music) My brother Canaan with us being 13 months apart, we spent so much time together thinking about how close we are and why we were so close, having a military dad, moving around.

You might not like me today, but when we move next month, you're gonna need me.

- I'm gonna need that friend.

That's one thing you can walk into a new place with.

- Exactly.

So that's an important part of the purpose of having these photos here.

The time capsule piece, it's like this old nightstand with a quilt that's replicating a blanket from a photo and an old corded-phone, a boombox, some CDs.

And on the corded-phone, there is a QR code where people can scan and hear all these recorded conversations between Canaan and I.

- Those bonds don't go away in spite of interruption by the state.

That is one of the registers that's most profound about what you've offered here.

- Yeah.

- And maybe we can think a little bit more about sound, because I know you have a video work that's also a part of the installation.

- [Nastassja] The table structure holds a smaller quilt and a TV that plays a video of my mom, reading letters that Canaan sent her.

- "To start off, Mommy, I deeply appreciate everything you do for me and have done..." - I just really liked this idea of thinking about the earliest time of Canaan's incarceration of not only how hard it was for me.

Also, feeling that responsibility towards my mother.

So being able to see her reading his letters speaks to what I was supporting.

- Your mom here just reminds me of how many other people we don't necessarily see when we see a number or a stat, right?

I wanna talk specifically about quilts and the quilt in the show.

- The quilt.

- [Jessica] Maybe we can make our way back there.

- Yeah, I'm matriarch now.

(Nastassja laughs) - So here we are.

Tell us the name of this quilt.

- This is security blanket.

(hip-hop music) Reading the letters from Canaan, I started to understand what his communication means to me, just as much as what it means to him, and feeling like I have to respond to a letter.

I can't miss Canaan's calls.

That's what this blanket serves as.

I'm in it and it's comfortable, but it could swallow me if I let it.

The detail of the project that is the fix to detail are the dimensions of the space, because they are the dimensions of his cell.

Seeing that portrait of Canaan that's mentally and emotionally, the way that I feel when I read his handwritten letters.

You can see scratched out words and you can see the process of someone's thoughts.

And then it feels like he's here.

In the portraits of us, our body language speaks to our relationship.

Seeing those two little kids describes without having to say how close we are in age, we're like this and we look like that in the photo.

Canaan drew a picture of his prayer rug.

It feels appropriate to sit on a similar surface that he sits on multiple times a day.

The space creates this energetic connection in my mind.

- Making this exhibition and these works have they changed the way you understand Abolition?

- It's easy to have an opinion on what the criminal justice system should look like until it's in your house.

- Right.

Your invitation is a really beautiful path to think about power and healing and even the word justice.

So I hope that you feel ecstatic about what you've offered to us, because it's very, very potent.

- "5/15/17.

Can you believe it's been five months.

Just yesterday I was feeling down, so I slept the majority of the day.

Sometimes it's hard to accept and believe I'm really in this place.

But later that night I started feeling better.

I keep telling myself this will all will be over soon.

I really want to believe it as much as I say it.

Canaan G Swift."

(upbeat music)