C.R.E.A.M.

Sable Elyse Smith’s C.R.E.A.M. locates the intersection of a specific fantasy of racial exclusion and containment in the mutual investments of real estate development and the prison system. Hollywoodland—the segregated community founded in 1923 and once advertised by the original version of the now iconic sign that sits atop the hills of Los Angeles—and Ironwood State Prison, come together in the imaginary of IRONWOODLAND, a sign Smith installed on the High Line in New York in 2018. Mining personal archives, research materials, and pop cultural references (with the book’s title a homage to Wu-Tang Clan’s 1993 eponymous song), Smith’s Cash Rules Everything Around Me spins out to consider the constant threat of police violence against Black and queer bodies, the prison system and its attendant procedures and regulations, and the interior, emotional landscape of personal trauma and memory. C.R.E.A.M. features writing by Sable Elyse Smith, poetry by A. H. Jerriod Avant, and an essay by Jessica Lynne.

C.R.E.A.M. is published on the occasion of the exhibition Moving Body, Moving Study at BAM and C.R.E.A.M., a High Line Art Commission, by Wendy’s Subway and BAM, Brooklyn with support from the High Line, New York, through the Art for Justice Fund, a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.