Hail Mary Soap
An artwork by Timothy James Young and Sofia Karim
Governor Newsom - wash away the death penalty!
For the second year running, Young sent his Easter Sunday artwork Hail Mary to California governor Gavin Newsom. In 2025 it was videos of boiling eggs sent to Young by supporters all over the world. In 2026 it’s Hail Mary Soap.
“We commend you for finding such a unique way to express your opposition to the death penalty and fully support your call to end it.”
Mike Farrell, president of Death Penalty Focus.
“Thank you for your important work in raising awareness about the innocent people wrongfully sentenced to death in California and the many injustices of the death penalty in our state.”
Natasha Minsker, former director of the ACLU of California’s Center for Advocacy & Policy.
From California’s death row, Hail Mary Soap, is an object of reflection and a call to action at once. Created by Timothy James Young, wrongfully imprisoned for 27 years, and Sofia Karim, the artwork is a continuation of their 2025 project Hail Mary, calling upon governor Gavin Newsom to end the death penalty, and calling upon us all to reflect on the brutal, unholy and uncivilized practice of capital punishment and its racial dimensions.
California has the nation’s largest death row population, numbering around 580 individuals, of which Young is one. The artwork envisages 580 limited edition soaps. Sentenced to death by 12 non-Black jurors for crimes he did not commit, Young was arrested on Easter Sunday 1999. Twenty-seven years on, the governor’s soap is the first of 580 Hail Mary Soap bars Young hopes to make. Each bar is to be engraved with the words “clemency, pardon, commutation” along with the prisoner number of each individual currently on California’s death row.The soap comes in protective cardboard casing, itself an artwork to keep rather than discard. It unfolds into a cross embellished with the numbers of every prisoner on California’s death row, and a mirror at the centre. Slipped between the soap and mirror is a letter. It is Tim Young’s open letter to governor Gavin Newsom, written on Easter Sunday 2025, the 26th anniversary of Tim’s arrest.
The first, work-in-progress test soap will be sent to governor Newsom on Easter Sunday, 2026, a day which marks 27 years since Young’s arrest.
For all the bleakness, the resistance is inspiring. The Free Tim Young movement has drawn wide international support, from the Rohingya refugee camps, to Hebron, to Khartoum and beyond. Through enigmatic metaphors such as boiling eggs, soap, white-out, the movement continues in its artistic endeavour to hold a mirror to the carceral state.
