Publication

The final publication collects, revises and critically interprets the main themes addressed during the three years of activity, emphasizing the interdisciplinary character of the project. The point of departure is the study of prison graffiti, both historical and contemporary, as an anonymous and hidden manifestation of people who, throughout history, have lost their freedom or experienced some form of repression. In this sense, part of the work carried out in the project and presented in this publication consists in analyzing various testimonies of this graffiti, not only in the Inquisition and other prisons, but also in spaces of repression such as reformatories, psychiatric hospitals, and refugee camps. By broadening the perspective both geographically and chronologically, the publication addresses different symbolic and semantic meanings of graffiti and the way their perception and value changes across different times and places. The volume “Graffiti Art in Prison” contains the scientific contributions of the doctoral students who participated in the project and the researchers affiliated with the various partner institutions who organized and coordinated the educational activities. The articles, the result of research developed over the three-year period, have been grouped according to macro-thematic areas as follows:

1  Historical Graffiti and Inquisition Prisons   
2  Art in Spaces of Confinement   
3  Uncomfortable Heritage and its Conservation
4  Contemporary Graffiti and Urban Life 
5  Artistic Projects in Prison

In order to include the human dimension of the project and the voice of the detainees in our book, the last section (5) is dedicated to the workshops carried out in the prisons of Palermo and Florence. Through rich photographic documentation and short texts, this section illustrates the workshops in which students and inmates worked together under the
supervision of artists acting as mediators. The volume is published by the Lettera22 publishing house of Syracuse.