Gray Area artists and community members Bathing, Brandon Eversole, and Alkimiya Transfer will take us on two powerful audiovisual journeys, utilizing the technical capabilities of the Grand Theater. Half of the proceeds from this event will be donated to Kenneth Reams, an artist, writer, and activist currently held in solitary confinement in Arkansas. Alkimiya Transfer’s set features a new poem by Reams, entitled "Distributive Justice."
In 1993, Kenneth Reams was an unarmed accomplice to a robbery that resulted in a fatality. In the midst of the struggle, Reams’s friend shot and killed the victim. Like so many, Reams was represented in court by a public defender. He was offered a plea bargain but refused to plead guilty, and at the age of 18, he was the youngest person sentenced to death by lethal injection in Arkansas. Kenneth Reams did not kill anyone, and yet he remains in solitary confinement without human contact to this day.
Despite living in solitary confinement for the past 27 years, Reams has cultivated his practice as an artist, a poet, a writer, and the founder of the nonprofit organization Who Decides, Inc. Who Decides, Inc. is a national network of activists and volunteers working to educate the general public about the practice and history of capital punishment in the United States through various mediums of art.
