Pictured: Blue Mosque, a painting produced by Ghaled Al-Bihani as part of the Art from Guantanamo project
The Pentagon reversed a decision preventing Guantanamo Bay prisoners from exhibiting paintings they produced while at the detention camp. Guantanamo
prisoners who learned to paint thanks to the Art from
Guantanamo project will now be allowed to own and distribute their
artwork.
- The Pentagon said that inmates
who are leaving Guantanamo will be allowed to take a "practicable
quantity of their art" with them.
- 20 of the 34 participants in the Art from Guantanamo project are slated for release.
- The
original decision barring the ownership and exhibition of the art came
after a 2017 exhibition of Guantanamo prisoner paintings at John Jay
College in New York.
- Some of the paintings were available for sale through the detainees' lawyers.
- Last
year, seven former Guantanamo prisoners and one current inmate
published a letter asking the Biden administration to let them own and
distribute their artwork.
- "Art from Guantanamo became part of
our lives and of who we are. It was born from the ordeal we lived
through. Each painting holds moments of our lives, secrets, tears, pain,
and hope," the letter read.
- Much of the artwork produced as part of the Art from Guantanamo project is available on the project's website.
