This Obama portrait was created in collaboration by three artists on federal death row: Yuri Kadamov, a Lithuanian citizen; Aquilla Barnette, an African American from the South; and Lezmond Mitchell, a Navajo citizen.

Inspired by then President Obama’s message of hope and change, the artists created this piece within the rigid constraints of solitary confinement. Never inhabiting the same space as they shared ideas and contributed to the piece, it took ingenuity to make this project a reality: The artists slid canvases under the steel door of their respective one-man cells and handed it off to

the inmate-worker who would pass the artwork to the next collaborator in line.

The artists had hoped that Obama would reform the criminal justice system and grant clemency to their death-sentenced community. But when that change they believed in failed to materialize—Obama granted only one clemency petition to someone in their situation--hope faltered and crashed. Change, which they had hoped for, turned out to be an illusion, a mirage, a disappointment.

The change that had come was a worsening of mental health and executions under the next president. Lezmond Mitchell, who incorporated the motifs in the Obama portrait, was executed under the Trump presidency.