As soon as visitors enter the Institute of the Arts and Sciences (IAS), they are met with strands of cowrie shells hanging in woven vertical lines. Each one is attached into place so that no single shell stands alone. 

Up close, the structure symbolizes a return to the artist’s Haitian origins, forming something stronger as it accumulates. It stretches from ceiling to floor before gathering into woven baskets below, reinforcing a sense of connection rather than separation. The emphasis isn’t on any individual element, but on the act of bringing the physical and spiritual together.

“All of the work in this exhibition is about labor, dying, what is robbed from people of their agency and the joy of producing beauty, which they refuse to give up while they’re incarcerated,” said Visualizing Abolition visiting faculty fellow Pooja Rangan. “The work is profoundly about the relationship between labor, material and artwork.”

The IAS is hosting its Spring Exhibition. This year’s selected artists in residency, Gina Athena Ulysse, Ronaldo V. Wilson and Libia Posada, span from across the globe. The exhibition opened on April 10 and is on view until August 16. 

Two of the artists are UC Santa Cruz professors. Gina Athena Ulysse is a professor of humanities and Ronaldo V. Wilson is a professor of literature and the director of UCSC’s creative writing program. 

The final residency belongs to Libia Posada, a doctor from Medellín, Colombia, incorporating her equal love for art and medicine through the utilization of medical equipment into her installations. This is Posada’s first solo exhibition in the U.S. 

Gina Athena Ulysse

At the entrance of the IAS, attendees are immersed in the work of Ulysse’s “Redwoods Rasanblaj: Origins and Disentanglements.” Rasanblaj, coined by Ulysse in 2014 during a special issue of the Hemispheric Institute’s Emisférica scholarly journal, is a term originating from the language of Haitian Kreyòl. Rasanblaj refers to an assembly, compilation and the enlisting or regrouping of ideas, things, people and spirits.

Visitors to the IAS look through the entrance leading to Ulysse’s exhibit.

“The only peaceful place was the woods,” Ulysse describes. “Cause when you’re inside your house, you’re stuck watching the news, and things are not good. People are sick, people are dying. So the place for me, where there was no discrimination, was nature. Nature doesn’t discriminate, people do.” 

Ulysse utilizes objects with deep roots in her Haitian heritage; cowrie shells, têt gridap lamps and calabash demonstrate themes of decolonization, existing outside the confines of imperialist narratives, and feminism. 

A white dress embroidered in red thread reads “Voodoo Castle Built by Black Magic.”

Ulysse was inspired by American photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams’ impression of the UCSC campus’ redwood forests and its mission from a 1962 essay: 

“I know we cannot put thousands of students in arboreal classrooms (or could we?), but we can at least give these students a unique perspective into the world from which they came. We can also produce a special condition of beauty and — if you will — of spiritual therapy,” Adams wrote. 

Ulysse combines this idea of integrating nature into higher education with the recognition that we cannot accomplish the task of decolonization alone. 

“Origins and disentanglements — being more mindful of our stories of origins, where and how we are entangled with people around us, and what it means to attempt to detangle,” she said. “It’s always collective work, always in community.” 

Ronaldo V. Wilson 

On the aquamarine walls of Wilson’s exhibit, “There Are No Words, But Melodies,” viewers are faced with performance videos of the artist dancing on the beach, complete with a wig and mask. The opposite wall is covered with charcoal drawings. 

Wilson’s charcoal drawings fill the walls of his exhibit, “There Are No Words, But Melodies.”

The exhibit combines Wilson’s nuanced works of Black poetics, performance and visual representations of love, loss and the self. 

“This unfathomable moment — what we think of as fact, the truth, citizenship, real life has become transmuted,” Wilson said. “What language can’t address, how visual art, performance and movement allows for another way to consider those questions.” 

Wilson constantly pushes societal boundaries, as his work is not limited to a single medium. 

Wilson’s exhibit incorporates a variety of mediums — including charcoal drawings, wigs and video performance pieces.

“I like to do things that are new, that challenge me,” Wilson said. 

As visitors venture deeper, the walls fade to black combined with charcoal prints depicting the impact of the death of his father, as well as a 23-by-12 foot copy of the artist’s resume, or curriculum vitae, which translates to ‘circle of life.’ 

A floor-to-ceiling scroll printed with Wilson’s curriculum vitae, or ‘circle of life.’

Libia Posada

Artist Libia Posada stands in front of her work, “Everything is Going Right.”

Posada’s “Everything is Going Right” cultivates themes of identity, immigration and incarceration with tools from her familiar medical background. 

“I wanted to explore the meaning of that word, because right is fine or right is correct or right is right, but right is also the right side of the things of the discussions. It’s going right, but many things are going wrong. It’s a semantic game,” Posada said. 

A small white figurine beats a drum embellished with the name of Posada’s work.

As viewers enter Posada’s installment, they are disoriented by fluorescent overhead lighting, reminiscent of the artist’s medical background. One side contains a wall of scales each labeled with “left, right, wrong” above symptoms of the human condition, such as cruelty and barbarism. 

Posada uses medical scales to represent the current political climate.

Shelves on the opposite wall hold books meticulously wrapped in gauze. Among the collection are texts that are typically banned in prisons, such as works spotlighting Black and Latine activism. Posada’s work evokes messages of prison abolition alongside the medical, social and political affiliations at home and abroad. 

Posada intentionally chose to interact with gauze to represent “how fragile we are. How fragile these territories are … We think that [territories] are strong, something that is alive, that could die too.”

Scalpels, scissors and a sutured rock labeled “Africa” sit on a table.

Posada and IAS director and chief curator Rachel Nelson visited with women sentenced to life without parole at the California Institution for Women (CIW) in Chino, California. 

An offshoot from the rest of the space is a room of blue portraits. The same shade as the uniforms at the CIW Chino. No visible faces, just their identification number, age and number of years in prison. This artistic choice symbolizes lost time and a population that often goes overlooked in the Prison Industrial Complex, which are elderly incarcerated women. 

Each picture frame represents one woman facing incarceration, only listing their identification number, age and time spent incarcerated.

“At this rate, one in five women who are incarcerated are over the age of 55,” Nelson said. “Because of the massive extreme sentencing in the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s, before laws began to change against three strikes laws.” 

Visualizing Abolition Screening Series 

In a small screening room off Posada’s section of IAS, five films are displayed, all connected through various representations of incarceration. These films were curated by Visualizing Abolition visiting faculty fellow Pooja Rangan, and are on view until June 7, 2026. 

The films showcase key experiences through the use of film. From the high cost of medicine for an incarcerated veteran to the fight for ASL classes, as well as the flooding that occurs in these facilities. 

Outside of the Spring Exhibition, the IAS is dedicated to uplifting stories of incarcerated communities. Students should be aware of the IAS and their exhibitions. With connections to themes many students learn about in their classrooms, such as abolition, race and identity. 

“Art is able to capture people’s stories in ways that other mediums are unable to, and often is the most powerful tool to do so,” said second-year politics and film and digital media double major Molly Kaeyer. “Now more than ever, it’s important to uplift those voices of people who don’t necessarily have those platforms, and I think art is the best way to do so.”