Exhibit runs May 2-27
Opening reception: Saturday May 2 from 4-6pm
Calls From Home screening and discussion: Sunday May 24, 4-5:30pm
Open during all events, or email us to schedule a different time to view

Amid the rapid expansion of the U.S. prison system over the last half-century, Central Appalachia became an area of particular growth for the construction of new carceral facilities. Due to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ First Step Act, which established a radius of up to 500 miles between incarcerated individuals and their home residences, cities as far as Washington DC are enmeshed in relationships to the mountainous communities of Appalachia via the regular displacement of people through the prison-industrial-complex. In this exhibition, artists use a range of tactics to communicate the histories of harm, abolitionist activism, and community that emerge from this transregional entanglement. Through coal dust photography, quiltmaking, pen illustration, and other media, 500 Miles Out highlights a range of stories: episodes of organizing against pro-prison federal policies, the lived experiences of structural racism in Appalachian prisons bolstered by the stark demographic divides between incarcerated populations and local prison staffs, and the repurposing of toxic mining sites toward federal prison building. In several of the works on view, the proposed construction of federal prison FCI Letcher––which is slated to be built on a former mountaintop removal coal mine in Letcher County, Kentucky, and would be the most expensive prison in U.S. history if constructed––serves as a particularly pressing case through which artists and activists agitate against continued expansion of the carceral apparatus.