The Place for Art in Prison

by Lauren Boyer

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Art and beauty have always been symbolic of wealth and culture. The liberal arts are a privilege which can only thrive in the most powerful of settings. They give us a chance to enjoy stretching our brains, a chance we only have because we lack the mental fatigue that accompanies the physical labor we otherwise need for survival. 

When I traveled to Kenya for two weeks my senior year of high school, I was not surprised that the Kenyan students I met were in many ways just like me. I was surprised that every single one of them was so much more brilliant than I am. Aside from being the most intelligent and ambiguous people I had ever met, they wanted to cover their school walls with scientific diagrams instead of art. 

They wanted to learn because they needed to succeed in STEM to build a better life for themselves and their families in a country whose system was failing them. Growing up in one of the most powerful countries in the world, I had the luxury of staring at art on my school walls and receiving its psychological benefits. 

There’s no denying that art is powerful. Art therapy, which is sometimes used at correctional facilities, is known to help address self-esteem problems, stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, and personality disorders — as well as aid emotion, exploration, and sometimes ease physical illnesses and disabilities. 

One way art has helped prisoners in particular is in the case of the men at Guantanamo. Most of the men were innocent foreigners, including children, who were sold to the United States. While they all faced the death penalty, over 90% of detainees were ultimately released without charge, and more of them have died than have been convicted. 

Six of the men together made almost a hundred works of art that feature a variety of subjects, from prison bars to flowers. 

Similarly, the conditions of war and war prisons have brought out similar creativity that deals with changed perceptions and new trauma. Take William Golding for example. Without his experiences in WWII, there would never have been The Lord of the Flies.

Like Golding, not all productive creativity that spurns from trauma is visual. War-traumatized prisoner William Chester Minor helped create the Oxford Dictionary while serving his time for killing a man. 

Great, beautiful things come alive in the face of suffering. Giving mental patients, war veterans, and federal prisoners the tools to create them not only helps them recover and rehabilitate but also gives representation to the societal problems that surround all of us. 

During my first semester of college I took a class on Italian Cinema in Rome. I was fascinated at how filmmakers represented Italian history, from the Neorealism that represented the depression (Bicycle Thieves, Il Posto), to the colors and architecture of Facism (The Conformist, Suspiria) to the Poliziotteschi (High Crime) which dealt with the trauma of terrorism during the years of lead. 

How can we move art into the forefront of our national and generational trauma? We can start by giving prisoners access to the tools they need to create art. We can give them the dignity of productivity and a space for the mind to naturally heal itself. Art shouldn’t end in the courtroom — it should follow convicts to the prisons. 

Some prisoners are even taking art into their own hands. The Menendez brothers, whose story filled TV screens in the 90s, began a beautification project at the prison where they reside based on a prison in Norway. Norway is paving the way for art in every cell. The question is whether other prisoners and governments will follow.