dramirali

About
The drawings came into existence during my thirty one months of detention in a non-criminal immigration detention facility. During times of incarceration it is a good idea to find ways to keep your mind busy, therefore I started drawing. The lack of basic materials created no hindrance for my creative spirit. I just made use of what I could come across. On any given day, I was spending approximately six to eight hours facilitating the process of THE ink devouring the paper. Extended incarceration produces a severe decision-making impairment (to say the least) in people who experience such calamity. The prefrontal region of the brain is the part that supports reasoning and decision-making. I made a conscious effort to exercise this part of the brain with each line traced. This process became a very crucial in my drawings. While in confinement, the ability to do things in one’s own way is very much limited. Usually one is told what to do and at times and instances; how to do it as well. You are told when to wake up, eat, sleep, etc. For me, spending my time drawing came as a sanity saver. While drawing, every stroke of the pen, every dot, every line resulting in shapes, sizes, depths, and dimensions resulted as a conscious decision making behavior on my part. I was constantly enhancing the awareness within myself that those decisions were mine and mine only and nobody else had any control on them. This cognizant psychological conditioning helped me in preserving my mental sanity. A security guard asked me once about a particular drawing that I was working on. He wanted to know what it meant. I told him that I was working on “ A ESCAPE PLAN”. Saying this to him was not a good idea as all hell broke loose. I had to explain the drawing to his superiors, literally convincing them that it was not a physical escape plan but a mental and psychological one. I told them that when I close my eyes, that isolated time in space begins. That the inexplicable force that pushes and pulls shapes from my head connecting dots to dots, line to lines, shapes of all sizes, depths, and dimensions comes forward. It is with this creative energy, the use of shapes, geometry that I construct my thoughts, my world, in this time of imprisonment. Seemingly an infinite supply of anything can come from nothing and vice versa. It's not my brain, or my imagination, its something greater. Like a universal mind. A mind that has the answer to all my imagination can ask of it. When this brain is in use time and space seemingly does not exist, rather each moment is an infinite piece of this work of architecture. When I leave this state and arrive back on this planet, it always seems to be a bit different. Like each object has a particular glow to it that can not be explained, only experienced. And generally a new drawing has been placed in front of me. I believe it did not make any sense to the security guard and his superiors, but they did leave me alone. It was God's creed to go through every step. I made it out of the detention facility. And I have tried to draw again, but it does bring back loads of unpleasant memories. Fortunately during detention, I was able to (once again very consciously) look at the good and bright side of things. I knew that whatever I was going through was going to become a part of me and going to stay with me for the rest of my life. It was my choice then to associate more of the good memories, energies with my experiences so when a sight, sound, smell, get the sequence triggered, besides bad, sad, memories, there would be ample good and pleasant memories to balance things out. I believe that’s what life is all about. I would classify my drawings as pieces of a conscious mind influencing deliberative responses to objective materials. While the adaptive unconscious guided responses are made unthinkingly.

Location
San Antonio

Age: 40

Gender: MALE