When Moath al-Alwi found himself in a windowless steel cell in Guantánamo’s Camp 6, he asked his guards for scraps of cardboard. After experiencing years of interrogation and torture, “low-value” detainees like al-Alwi were permitted by authorities during the Obama administration to create art. As the former detainee Mansoor Adayfi describes in his 2021 memoir Don’t Forget Us Here, al-Alwi fashioned the cardboard into a window frame and hung it on his cell wall. He painted it with a view east to Mecca, with “the sun rising over a vast blue sea.”

In 2017, I curated an exhibition of artwork given by al-Alwi and other detainees to their lawyers, some of which is reproduced here. Camp authorities reacted by banning any more art from leaving Guantánamo. Al-Alwi, who has spent more than 20 years at Guantánamo without ever being charged with a crime, was cleared for release in January 2022. But he has told his lawyer that he would rather his artwork be released than himself, “because as far as I am concerned, I’m done, my life and my dreams are shattered. But if my artwork is released, it will be the sole witness for posterity.”

—Erin L. Thompson

Khalid Qasim, Untitled (Balance), 2017.

Sabri Al Qurashi, Untitled (Fence With Flag), 2012.

Muhammad Ansi, Untitled (Alan Kurdi), 2016.

Ghaleb Al-Bihani, Untitled (Landscape With Blue Mosque), 2016.

Sabri Al Qurashi, Untitled (Kneeling Detainee), 2012.

Muhammad Ansi, Untitled (Impressionistic Sailboats), 2016.