Guantanamo Bay Art Exhibit Stirs Controversy: Opportunity to Sign Petition

Muhammad Ansi, Crying Eye (Mother), 2015.

OPEN THROUGH JANUARY 26, 2018

PRESIDENT’S GALLERY, JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, NEW YORK

Visit exhibit online at https://www.artfromguantanamo.com/

Detainees at the United States military prison camp known as Guantánamo Bay have made art from the time they arrived. The exhibit will display some of these evocative works, made by eight men: four who have since been cleared and released from Guantánamo, and four who remain there. They paint the sea again and again although they cannot reach it.

Free and open to all. Enter at 899 10th Avenue (at 59th Street) and proceed to the President’s Gallery, on the 6th floor of Haaren Hall. Open Monday-Friday 9-5 pm.

Abdualmalik Abud, Yemen, 2015.
Ammar Al Baluchi, Vertigo at Guantanamo.
Ghaleb Al-Bihani, Lighthouse, 2016.
Djamel Ameziane, Interior, 2010.
Khalid Qasim, Large Sailboat on the Ocean, 2017, paint over gravel mixed with glue.
Muhammad Ansi, Hand Holding Red Flowers, 2015 (color photocopy of original and reverse, showing stamps indicating approval for release from Guantánamo).
Muhammad Ansi, Hands Holding Flowers through Bars, 2016.

NCAC Condemns Government Policy Depriving Americans of Access to Art by Guantanamo Detainees

New York, NY, 11/28/2017–An art exhibition at John Jay College in New York has provoked an abrupt change to government policy regarding art created by detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon and Department of Defense have declared that all art created by detainees will henceforth become the property of the US government and may no longer be removed from the prison, even upon a detainee’s clearance and release. It has been suggested that the art will be destroyed. The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) vehemently objects to the violation of the public’s right to access this work and thus fully participate in the political conversation around Guantanamo. The new directive also violates the human rights of the detainees under international norms and further destruction of the work would impermissibly suppress documents of historical importance.

Since all art that leaves Guantanamo is subject to intense scrutiny by military officials, the new directive serves no legitimate national security purpose. The only purpose it appears to serve is to block the American public’s access to detainees’ artistic expression and stifle the public’s full participation in a national conversation about the US government’s policies in Guantanamo. Recognizing that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, most of whom remain held without charge, possess human imagination may inspire an uncomfortable empathy, but Americans have a right to fully examine their government’s policies and their effects. The American public now and in the future deserves access to such documents.

NCAC and the undersigned organizations fully support the curators at John Jay College and are intervening directly with the Pentagon and Department of Defense. This baseless policy change uses art as a political football in an effort to prevent these works—and a deeper understanding of those who created them—from informing public discussion of the policies the US government makes in its citizens’ names. We condemn this attempt to obstruct the American public discourse essential to a democratic and open society.

Co-signed by:

National Coalition Against Censorship

Aica International

Association of University Presses

College Art Association

Defending Rights & Dissent

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Freemuse

Free Speech Coalition

Harvard Islamic Society’s Anti-Islamophobia Network

Media Freedom Foundation

PEN America

Project Censored

T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights

Woodhull Foundation

Add your name to curator Erin Thompson’s petition to stop the destruction of art at Guantanamo.