Exhibition Details

Jason Jacques Gallery is thrilled to announce an upcoming exhibition in partnership with the Last Prisoner Project. Titled 'Smoke', the exhibition centres on a 19th-century smoking set made by the French jeweller Boucheron. The piece is a beautiful, somewhat rarefied, highly decorative, and yet functional art object with a complex history that’s relevant to many of the issues we encounter today— attitudes towards the idea of 'intoxication' as well a pervasive fear of, yet inexplicable attraction to, the "other."
SMOKE is an exploration of past vs present attitudes towards 'substance use,' broadly termed as, leisure, luxury, medicine, and criminalized behaviour. It also directly addresses biases towards class and race that our culture's ever-evolving attitudes both deconstruct and propagate. We’re staging the exhibition specifically within the context of the current push for the legalization of cannabis, the rapidly shifting legal landscape surrounding it, and how its criminalization reinforces the systemic oppression of people of colour and marginalized communities.
The Last Prisoner Project (LPP) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to cannabis-related criminal justice reform, with a focus on helping individuals currently or previously incarcerated for non-violent, marijuana-related convictions. As the United States moves away from the criminalization of cannabis, giving rise to a major new industry, there remains the fundamental injustice inflicted upon those who have suffered under America’s unjust policy of cannabis prohibition. Through intervention, advocacy, and awareness campaigns, the Last Prisoner Project works to redress the past and continuing harms of these inhumane and ineffective laws and policies.
100% of Jason Jacques Gallery's profits from contemporary art sales will go to the Last Prisoner Project.
Participating artists include Paul S. Briggs, Rem Denizen, Shinichiro Kitaura, Anne Marie Laureys, Roberto Lugo, Gareth Mason, Shari Mendelson, Johannes Nagel, Rick Owens, Aneta Regel, Isaac Scott, Eric Serritella, Kim Simonsson, Bente Skjøttgaard, Chase Travaille, Nick Weddell.