The notion of living between worlds, never fully belonging yet always seeking to construct meaning within shifting landscapes, lies at the heart of my work. Prison Nest is the product of many hands and facilitated by myself.

Prison Nest is made up of hundreds of ripped-up prison documents, each folded into origami bricks. They are fragments of bureaucracy transformed into the building blocks of something else. I give these bricks to any prisoner who is struggling to focus or create. Sometimes, they simply piece them together in an act of quiet, cathartic repetition, finding solace in the rhythm of their hands. Other times, the bricks become something new. These pieces have been a sphere, a swan, a teddy bear, a vase. In this act of folding and refolding, the rigid structures of the prison system are momentarily softened, repurposed into something personal, something formed by choice rather than by force. Like a bird creating a home from gathered pieces of the environments around it, so the men I work with do the same, finding a way to create even in such adverse circumstances.

Photographed by Tod Jones courtesy of IKON Gallery. Birmingham, and Alicja Kielan courtesy of Galerie Op Enheim Wrocław