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The Guantánamo Artwork and Testimony of Moath Al-Alwi

Deaf Walls Speak

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  • © 2024

Overview

Editors:
  1. Alexandra S. Moore

    1. Binghamton University, Binghamton, USA

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Elizabeth Swanson

    1. Babson College, Babson Park, USA

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  • 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

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxxiv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: The Guantánamo Artwork of Moath al-Alwi: Art as Expression, Witness, Evidence

    • Alexandra S. Moore, Elizabeth Swanson
    Pages 1-21

  3. Artmaking at Guantánamo: A Ship Expresses Rescue

    • Moath al-Alwi
    Pages 23-46

  4. My Brother, the Artist

    • Mansoor Adayfi
    Pages 47-52

  5. “APPROVED BY US FORCES”: Showing and Hiding Art from Guantánamo

    • Erin L. Thompson
    Pages 53-69

  6. From Wasting Away to a Way with Waste: The Visibility of Moath al-Alwi’s Hunger and Sculpture

    • Joshua O. Reno
    Pages 71-92

  7. Ships of Scraps: Moath’s Model Ships in Islamic Art and Prison Histories

    • Mira Rai Waits
    Pages 93-112

  8. Guantánamo Bay Ensigns: Material Rhetorics and Moath al-Alwi’s Ships

    • Belinda Walzer
    Pages 113-129

  9. A Sea Without a Shore: Toward Building an Alternative Visual Archive of Guantánamo Bay

    • Safiyah Rochelle
    Pages 131-148

  10. Assemblage by Necessity: The Maritime Sculpture of Moath al-Alwi

    • Gail Rothschild
    Pages 149-161

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 163-166
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Keywords

About this book

 Deaf Walls Speak presents an insider’s view of artmaking in Guantánamo, the world’s most notorious prison, as self-expression and protest, and to stage a fundamental human rights claim that has been denied by law and politics: the right to be recognized as human. The book juxtaposes detainee artist Moath al-Alwi’s testimony and artwork with essays that situate his work within legal, political, aesthetic, and material contexts to demonstrate that artwork at Guantánamo constitutes important forms of material witnessing to human rights abuses perpetrated and denied by the U.S. government. 

Reviews

Deaf Walls Speak” makes available Moath Al-Alwi’s urgent testimony about his ongoing experience as a Guantanamo detainee of the war on terror. It centers on Moath’s artistic practice, specifically his boat sculptures that have been exhibited in the United States to acclaim. These are revelatory and speak eloquently of a universal yearning for freedom. The volume’s editors have assembled an interdisciplinary group of essays that look beyond the law to make Moath Al-Alwi’s humanity present and decry his ongoing incarceration without charge. The book shows that Moath’s first level audience were the guards he interacted with and his fellow prisoners. Art formed community in a setting explicitly designed to make human bonds impossible. The model ships’ voyage to exhibition spaces beyond the detention facilities of Guantanamo underscores their symbolism of free movement and the devastating ironies of Moath’s continued detention. Lucid and vital, this book is a crucial tool for teaching the war on terror and carceral aesthetics.
–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

  • Binghamton University, Binghamton, USA

    Alexandra S. Moore

  • Babson College, Babson Park, USA

    Elizabeth Swanson

About the editors

Alexandra S. Moore is Professor of English and Co-Director of the Human Rights Institute at Binghamton University. 

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

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