The White Box Gallery, unassumingly tucked away on a cobblestone sidestreet in China Town, has for the past few weeks displayed a series of ink sketches and oil paintings called No Human Way to Kill by British artist Robert Priseman. On Wednesday, I arrived at the White Box to meet Robert and to view these. At the door, he introduced me to an energetic, red-headed woman named Cathy Harrington, who I assumed was involved with the outreach or production of the exhibit. All three of us entered the small gallery together. Large oil paintings of the different methods of execution in the United States stood between smaller sketches. Robert had left out any human figures, and so the gas chamber, firing squad restraint chair, electrical chair, hanging chamber and lethal injection gurney appeared as decontextualized objects, alien and ominous. The lines were sharp, the colors, mostly blue and green were disconcerting. The technical complexity of the instruments of execution evident from Robert's attention to detail, emphasized for me the fact that highly trained experts give much thought into how a person is going to be killed.

Looking at the paintings, I felt like one of the witnesses kept behind glass during an execution--able to observe with a sense of morbid curiousity the place in which a death was about to take place, but silenced by that glass wall. "I've always wondered" Robert noted as we stopped in front of the lethal injection gurney, "Why they put padding on the gurney?" 

Cathy accompanied me on my tour of the gallery. It was only later over coffee in a tiny Prince street Cafe that I discovered Cathy, a Unitarian Minister, had contributed to Robert's project through an essay called "A Mother's Story." It tells of her experience of having had her 26 year-old-daughter brutally murdered. She writes: "I would say that what might be the most insidious tragedy of the death penalty is that if we wilfully murder murderers, how can we ever hope to become fully human, to complete the journey?" The cold mechanical execution methods of the state rendered into art by Robert became juxtaposed with Cathy's profound belief in humanity.

I was deeply moved, and believe that many more will be interested in viewing and discussing Robert's "No Human Way to Kill."  I look forward to collaborating with Robert, Cathy and others on bringing his work to several New York City colleges in the Fall.

~Colleen Eren