“Exonerated” by Becky Gottsegen brings attention to the horrors of the criminal justice system while recognizing the men who have faced wrongful convictions.
Independent artist Becky Gottsegen’s exhibition “Exonerated: Portraits of the Wrongfully Convicted” is a collection of 23 busts of men who were falsely imprisoned in the Louisiana prison system for crimes they did not commit. The exhibition is currently being displayed at the Cary Saurage Community Arts Center in Baton Rouge.
The purpose of the exhibition is to draw attention to the devastating shortcomings of the criminal justice system in Louisiana that allow for the wrongful convictions of innocent people, Gottsegen said.
“There was particularly a period of time where if you were young and Black and maybe had done some minor infraction— here are these guys who got in a little trouble for something minor, and then they got serious crimes pinned on their backs,” Gottsegen said.
The exhibition also serves as a way to bring more attention to the stories of the individual men, putting faces and bringing humanity to the disheartening statistics, Gottsegen said.
“The thing that is so upsetting to me is when I started working with them, working on these busts, they felt like it was so wonderful for these men to be honored because you spend all these years in prison, you’re exonerated, it’s an article in the newspaper and then it goes away,” Gottsegen said. “It might be on TV that night and then it’s over and it goes away.”
Because of their wrongful imprisonment, the exonerees have been forced to readapt to life post-incarceration after decades in the prison system, reconciling their new lives with the lives they could have led, Gottsegen explained. One of the exonerees, Jarvis Ballard, was an athlete and had dreams of making it to the NFL.
“He played football at Angola, he was an athlete there,” Gottsegen said. “And when he got the bust, he said, ‘I wonder if I hadn’t been sent to prison for 30 years, if I would have been able to play in the NFL and have a portrait done for me for that reason.’”
Gottsegen began her series of clay sculptures in November 2022 when she was commissioned by her friend Frank Neuner, a board member for the Innocence Project New Orleans, to sculpt the bust of Jerome Morgan, one of the men exonerated by the Innocence Project. From there, she created even more sculptures that she then gifted to the men themselves.
“I had always done them to give to the men,” Gottsegen said, “My son kept saying, ‘Mom, you need to have an exhibit of these. You need to draw attention to the horrors of the criminal system in Louisiana.’”
Gottsegen collaborated with her friend to create molds of the original clay sculptures, which she then cast in hydrostone and painted with brown acrylic paint and finished with a gold glaze to give the appearance of bronze. The whole process of creating the replicas from start to finish took about six weeks.
“So those are the ones that are in the exhibit at the arts council,” Gottsegen said. “They’re copies. The originals are with the men. And the nice thing is if they ever break them or anything happens, that I could produce another one.”
“Exonerated” was first exhibited at The Building’s art gallery in New Orleans in May, and is now being exhibited for the second time in Baton Rouge, garnering even more attention than before. However, Gottsegen’s goal with this collection was never to earn acclaim for herself.
“I didn’t do this because I wanted recognition as an artist,” Gottsegen said. “I did this because I wanted recognition for the Innocence Project New Orleans and the men.”
“Exonerated: Portraits of the Wrongfully Convicted” is open for public viewing at the Cary Saurage Community Arts Center at 233 St. Ferdinand Street, Baton Rouge. The exhibit is free of charge and open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day until May 14.
