Carceral Arts

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

This interdisciplinary collection examines the thriving world of arts and creativity within prisons and other sites of confinement, revealing the complex terrain of ‘carceral aesthetics’. Set within environments marked by repression, contributors reveal how artistic practices become vital strategies of coping, resistance and political expression, while also being entangled in institutional rehabilitation agendas.

Bringing together global scholarship, artist experiences and practice-based insights, the book interrogates the motivations, tensions and histories that shape prisoner arts, highlighting their role as testimonies to the lived experience—and pains—of captivity. Together, the chapters offer a theoretical framework for understanding the promises and contradictions of carceral arts today.