Hinterland marks the Creative Capital premiere of Sherrill Roland’s (2021 Awardee) The Jumpsuit Project(s), a series of collaborative exhibitions across North Carolina. As part of this initiative, Roland has worked with the Teen Promise student group at Broughton High School, the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke University, and the law schools at Wake Forest University and North Carolina Central University. Together, they have developed exhibitions that examine the complexities of justice, innocence, and incarceration. 

The exhibition Hinterland, a collaboration between Roland and Michael A. Betts II, and Alim Braxton, features audio of automated phone operators chiming in periodically over the bullhorn loudspeakers, announcing time limits, and monitoring the calls of the incarcerated. This audio has been collected and archived through the many conversations between Braxton and Betts. Numerous landline red phones, without keypads, are mounted on the walls throughout the space. Viewers can pick up the receiver and hear conversations between the trio of artists. Displayed on a monitor and a pair of large television screens are Alim’s lyrical videos and musical album, accessible through headphones. The headsets provide a refuge from the institutional sounds. Lastly, Braxton and Roland’s collaborative artworks highlight the materiality of the carceral space through concrete portraits and a large-scale projection of a handwritten letter exchanged between the pair.