#Cindy Blažević

[walrusmagazine]

Invisible Lives: Meet Canada’s Undocumented Kids

Without legal status, these young people must live in the shadows

“Kids deal with the decisions other people made,” she says. Those kids spend most of their childhoods in Canada, where they do their schooling, form relationships, and build career aspirations, like everybody else. “It’s just this piece of paper thing—that is the difference,” says Pole. This “piece of paper thing” shuts folks out of ­colleges, universities, and trade schools: those who are not citizens or permanent residents generally require a study permit and must pay international fees to attend post-secondary institutions, and provincial aid often isn’t an option. It’s also a ­barrier to more basic rights, like access to health care and ­secure housing.

Read more at thewalrus.ca.

Photography by Cindy Blažević (cindyblazevic.com)

[photographyprison]

Until its closure in 2013, Kingston Penitentiary in Ontario, Canada was one of the longest continuous operating prisons in the world. It was shuttered due to rising maintenance costs and documented human rights violations. In its 160 years, Kingston Pen served up hardship and oppression. Not least, as in all Western societies, for minority groups and indigenous communities. Indigenous peoples make up less than four percent of the Canadian population, yet they account for the largest demographic of prisoners.

Through a Penal System, Darkly (2013 – 2015) is a raking, bamboozling, photo-based survey of the prison by artist Cindy Blažević.

Onto a general history of the institution, Blažević knits oral histories of current and past corrections administrators, legal experts, staff and prisoners. Audio clips, maps, photo-documentation and photo-composites bring the past to this very moment and foreground prison abolition arguments.

“Decarceration should be everybody’s business,” says Blažević.

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Read our Q&A: Cindy Blažević Has Built a “Choose Your Own Adventure” of Canada’s Legal and Penal History

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