First Meal

Artist Julie Green's First Meal explores the issue of wrongful conviction and exoneration by focusing on the first meal eaten by exonerees after spending years incarcerated for a crime they didn't commit. The paintings are paired with narrative accounts of those meals, written by Kirk Johnson, a former New York Times reporter, to provide a unique perspective on the experiences of exonerees.

Format: Hardback
Length: 200 pages
Publication date: 31 October 2023
Publisher: Oregon State University

With a parallel rise in DNA testing and widespread critique of police violence, civil asset forfeiture, and a host of other issues related to the American justice system, more and more attention is being paid to the issue of wrongful conviction and exoneration. In this innovative new work, artist Julie Green asks a simple question: when you're stepping out of prison after spending years incarcerated for a crime you didn't commit, what's the first thing you want to eat? From the small details of life at such a moment, a vast new landscape of the world can emerge, and that is the core concept of First Meal. Against a backdrop of the flawed American legal system, something of beauty, pain, hope, and redemption can be found, centered around a seemingly simple question and response. The idea that a single meal can have huge meaning, or that food can have deep cultural and emotional resonance, is hardly new. The prison tradition of offering a condemned person a meal of choice before execution was long part of the media coverage of the death penalty, and has been explored as well by psychologists, documentary filmmakers, and others. Writers from Proust to Michael Pollan have explored the idea that food is never just food. Food is memory, emotion, and meaning. Green began First Meal in 2018 and partnered with the Center on Wrongful Convictions, part of Northwestern University's School of Law, to gather the details of these food stories. As incorporated in the paintings, those exoneree stories are captured in the small details: state birds or flags from where the conviction took place, thumbprints representing DNA analysis, sentence dates, glow-in-the-dark skylines, and other symbols that work together to provide rounded portrayals. Greens paintings are paired with narrative accounts of the exonerees' journeys, providing a deeper understanding of the complexities and challenges they faced during their time in prison and after their release. First Meal is a powerful testament to the resilience and strength of the human spirit, and to the importance of justice and fairness in our society. It is a reminder that even in the darkest of times, there is always hope for a better future, and that a single meal can be a catalyst for change.

ISBN-13: 9780870712456