CHAIN GANG

Untitled (Chain Gang) is a captivating work by Winfred Rembert in which he remembers the hard labor and suffering of his time spent incarcerated. The central figure and surrounding nine men in the background are all clad in striped black-and-white prison uniforms and are hammering into the ground. The central inmate is the only figure who’s face can be seen. His eyes look to the side and his mouth is open as he yells out in exertion while slamming his anvil down. One can practically hear the cacophony of noises as the men work. Rembert fills the entire composition with an overwhelming landscape of rocks, as if to communicate that the day’s work will never end, and neither will their oppression and suffering. Born in Cuthbert, Georgia in 1945, Rembert grew up in the Jim Crow South where he picked cotton and peanuts. As a teenager, he was involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He was first arrested after one demonstration which ended with him running from armed policemen and stealing an unlocked car as a means to get away. He then escaped jail, was caught once more and hung by a mob of white men, but not killed. He spent the next seven years on a chain gang. Later in life after his release from jail, he married his wife Patsy Gammage and settled in New Haven, Connecticut. Patsy encouraged Rembert to use his leather-tooling skills that he learned while in prison to create pictures. His autobiographical work ranges from depictions of joyful memories of his childhood to the realities of the Jim Crow South and incarceration as a Black man. Rembert’s biography Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2022, a year after his passing.