Overview
- Presents artmaking in Guantánamo, world’s most notorious prison, as self-expression and protest
- Juxtaposes detainee artist Moath al-Alwi’s testimony and artwork in legal, aesthetic, and material contexts
- Argues that artwork at Guantánamo witnesses human rights abuses perpetrated and denied by the U.S. government
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights (PSLCHR)
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
Reviews
–Eleni Coundouriotis,Professor,Department of English,University of Connecticut, USA.
Moath al-Alwi's artworks from Guantánamo, created under the harshest conditions of abduction, confinement, and torture, appear nothing short of miraculous. This pioneering volume, blending firsthand testimonies with meticulous, careful and multidisciplinary scholarship, tells the story of its creation, censorship, and eventual exhibition. It demonstrates the profound significance artmaking holds for Moath al-Alwi in testifying to his torture as well as his humanity, while compelling us to reflect its potential meaning for us as a public.
Dr. Sebastian Köthe, Zurich University of the Arts.
Gracing every page of Deaf Wall Speaks are compelling insights about artwork by detainees at Guantanamo despite strictures intent on denying them self-expression. This authoritative collection of testimonies and essays about Moath al-Alwi’s ships and assemblages introduces evidentiary aesthetics to show the inseparable relations between materiality, subjectivity, witnessing, and evidence. Creativity, this riveting book reminds us, is a wellspring of survival in a place where the acceptance of one’s humanness cannot be taken for granted.
-- Wendy Kozol, Professor of Comparative American Studies, Oberlin College
Moath al-Alwi chooses to sit and "bleed," to use Hemingway's word, into his artworks—as the editors of this volume chose to sit and "bleed" on paper to shine a blaze of light on this dark place. Their writings mercilessly take me back to that darkness even as they illuminate it; their refusal to “know hopelessness” but rather to accept and "become friends" with it shows us all the way into the light.
-- Mohamedou Ould Slahi, author of Guantánamo Diary
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Elizabeth Swanson is Professor of Literature and Human Rights at Babson College.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Guantánamo Artwork and Testimony of Moath Al-Alwi
Book Subtitle: Deaf Walls Speak
Editors: Alexandra S. Moore, Elizabeth Swanson
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37656-6
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-37655-9Published: 21 September 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-37658-0Due: 22 October 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-37656-6Published: 20 September 2023
Series ISSN: 2524-8820
Series E-ISSN: 2524-8839
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXXIV, 166
Number of Illustrations: 15 b/w illustrations
Topics: Audio-Visual Culture, Human Rights, Arts