Guantánamo Bay and the Art of Resistance

This August, journalist Moustafa Bayoumi broke the story that the first photo of a detainee in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) black site had been declassified. It shows an emaciated Ammar al-Baluchi, standing shackled and naked in a starkly white room. Subjected to years of torture, according to CIA protocol, the photo of the Pakistani detainee was meant “to document his physical condition at the time of transfer.” In a recent Hyperallergic opinion piece, Bayoumi reflected on the dark history of various regimes’ use of similar “atrocity photography” — a genre of memories they create for themselves that chronicle violence, but obscure it from public view. 

While this photograph epitomizes dehumanization, another image shows a different perspective. Through a vortex of colored lines and dots, al-Baluchi illustrated what he saw during a spell of vertigo, which was brought on by a traumatic brain injury caused by this torture. 

No longer in the media spotlight, it’s all too easy for many to forget that dozens of people are still imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay. The detention camp has incarcerated hundreds of detainees from around the world since it opened in the early 2000s in the wake of 9/11, and al-Baluchi is in the vast minority of those who have been charged with crimes connected to those events. While over half of the men still held there today were cleared for release years ago, they have not been freed, and it’s possible they never will. 

Over a decade ago, a group of these men began to create art. At first, they used what little material they could find, such as soap scratched on walls or plastic forks scraped on styrofoam cups, even drawing with powdered tea on toilet paper. If these covert artists were discovered, they were punished. But starting in 2010, after Obama-era reforms, detainees were finally allowed to attend art classes. What happened was a brief flowering of the arts in one of the least likely places, and under inhumane conditions.

In this episode, we speak with Erin L. Thompson, a Hyperallergic contributor, a professor of art crime at John Jay College. She curated Ode to the Sea, a groundbreaking exhibition of artwork by detainees that debuted in 2018, and recently returned from a week-long trip to the Caribbean military prison in order to view the 9/11 trials that ended up being delayed. Thompson spoke with Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian about witnessing the strict policing of not only embattled art, but also how authorities maintain a tight control on photography taken by the media. 

Writer and artist Molly Crabapple, on the other hand, found a workaround. She joined us to discuss her 2013 trip to the detention center, when she was granted access to draw this surreal prison and its inhabitants, both the incarcerated men and medics, guards, and other actors that keep the machine running. Her work shows us how the craft of drawing can illuminate truths that censored photographs cannot. 

And finally, we spoke with writer Mansoor Adayfi, who was confined to Guantánamo Bay for almost 15 years. Like the vast majority of those imprisoned there, he was never charged with a crime. Adayfi gave us a first-hand account of hunger strikes, changes in torture tactics and confinement that came with eac