On October 18, Professor Deborah M. Weissman will visit Stanford Law and present her work on the Collaborative on Art from Guantánamo. The Collaborative is an interdisciplinary project that seeks to examine the role of art in the lives of detainees confined to Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp (GBDC). The project aims to inform the public and train students about the role of art and its intersection with human rights issues. By organizing an exhibit of selected pieces of detainee art, the project addresses the role of art as a means of coping with human rights deprivations, including imprisonment, isolation, and torture.

Between 2009 and 2017, detainees at GBDC were provided with art supplies and allowed to participate in art classes. Much of this artwork was transferred from the Detention Center to attorneys representing Guantánamo detainees. Some detainees were permitted to take their art upon their release. In late 2017, after a series of successful curated showings of this art in cities across the United States, detainees remaining at the detention camp were subsequently prohibited from transferring their art and denied ownership of their work. After intervention by human rights advocates, including two UN Special Rapporteurs, in early 2023, detainees were granted the right to take some of their artwork but only according to the government, as is “practicable” upon their release. Moreover, the government claims that the art remains the property of the United States and thus interferes with the artists’ autonomy with regard to their cultural creations.

Professor Weissman will discuss how the repression of the cultural works created by men held in Guantánamo—acts that violate international and domestic legal norms–   must be considered as a means to maintain the narrative of Muslims as terrorists, a narrative disrupted by their works of art.