The Russian Painter

Artemis fled a war, fought a felony, and spent 10 months in ICE captivity. It's a good thing he can paint.

Artemis. Photo by Catherine Walsh.

---

On a strip of 6x6 cloth nailed to a wall, dozens of abstracted bodies congregate on a grey floor. Some lie on cots, others sit together at a table, and someone in the bottom-right corner screams with hands held high. The deranged painting, made with acrylic and charcoal, is called “Common Cell Room.” It depicts living conditions in the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the largest ICE detention facility in the northeast. Its creator, a Targaryen-looking 28 year-old, makes sure to point out a fallacy in the building’s name: “It is not a processing center. It is a prison.”

The MVPC, per his description, is a shipping container that holds 60-70 men in the same open area. There are no cells; it’s just one big dusty pod. All within it are immigrants without enough documentation to appease the insatiable Trump administration. Some have criminal histories–murderers, drug-dealers, petty thieves–but many are innocent, harmless, asylum-seeking people who have found themselves trapped in the Middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, because of a nightmarish turn of events, both in their home countries, and the one they sought refuge in.

There have been substantial reports of physical and psychological abuse by guards. Namely chokeslams, spitting in the faces of detainees, the withholding of food and water, and illicit discrimination towards non-English speakers. Last August, three people were stabbed with a shank by a fellow inmate. Just three weeks ago, a Chinese citizen awaiting a hearing was found hanging dead in the shower.

Artemis recently spent 10 months there.

Aerial view of Moshannon.