Incarceration, Art, and The Gaze: A Reflection of The Holy See

by Justin Gallant, Cohort ’24

The entrance is silent as we step up to security, each of us surrendering passports and bags, like shedding symbols of our autonomy, leaving them at the gates. The guard—a silent, steady presence—leads us through squeezed corridors, where art, displayed on concrete walls, catches the rays peeping in—a fluorescent light also peers from a distance. A spectral, all-seeing eye watches us. White. Foucault’s gaze made manifest, it confronts us as we pass, a chilling reminder of surveillance embedded in every layer of carceral existence.

"They want bars, I want prison breaks, they want to rule the world, I want the world to rule itself” (Sole and DJ Pain 1,“Bars”).

This eye, this sentinel of the prison’s interior, recalls Foucault’s theory of the panopticon, where the omnipresent gaze renders the observer invisible yet omnipotent, echoing through the prison's architecture (Foucault, Discipline and Punish). Here, we become participants, complicit within the carceral space, paradoxically free yet bound by the confines of our empathy. The eye watches, both an artifact of art and authority, and in its white fluorescence, I feel the weight of this structure—the control, the discipline, the unseen power. It is situated on a watchtower, and I see that the artist, Claire Fontaine, has crossed out the eye—perhaps a negation of the panoptic structure that surrounds us. Yet, if this is a critique, it fails to reify. The gaze remains pervasive.

The event, The Holy See, invites visitors into a rarely seen world inside the walls of an Italian women’s prison, allowing us to witness the intersection of art and incarceration. It’s a unique and immersive experience, melding the surreal and the real to capture the complexity of life behind bars. The guard unlocks door after door, leading us deeper, until we arrive in a room lined with art: pop art, vivid and jarring, a reminder of lives shaped by isolation and resilience.

“My enemy surrounds me, I can see the jail from my roof, it’s a pity... I ain’t leavin’ till it reaches me. Bars” (Sole and DJ Pain 1).

And then they enter, the women whose lives are framed within these walls. In Italian, they introduce themselves, guiding our journey, speaking with voices layered by resilience and resignation. Translating with Dr. Silvia Mazzini, we learn these are not merely actors; they are prisoners—confined yet leading us, bearing witness to their confinement.

They take us to the courtyard, where reality converges. There is no artifice here, only the rawness of lives carved into routines pressed against stone. The courtyard is stark, and its openness is a mockery of freedom. Here, the women are not guides but inhabitants; their lives are shaped within this yard, the walls bearing witness to stories that unfold in the absence of autonomy.

In one room, a video plays—a story of life and love within the constraints of prison, of relationships surviving on fragments of connection. It’s profoundly moving, a reflection of love’s endurance amid separation. Another room holds a window through which these women glimpse their children, close yet unreachable, a transparent, merciful, and merciless divide. Here, Foucault’s theories of the gaze are inverted; the women watch the lives they cannot join, denied the intimacy of touch, the immediacy of presence.

“Every compromise I make is with the market, no more compromise till [the prison is] abolished” (Sole and DJ Pain 1).

There’s a moment of silence at the end, then soft, emotional goodbyes. Some embrace, some cry. We leave the prison’s gates, our emotions as raw as the art we’ve witnessed. Outside, a student mentions a cannolo, and the group begins to disperse. But the weight of memory holds me still, and I break down. My father’s memory floods back—ten years since he passed. I remember visiting him, his life shaped by confinement, and the solemn task of bringing him home. He spent years in prison while I was in my young adult life, and I remember those visits—waiting to see him, navigating the same bureaucratic rituals of surrendering belongings, the silent guards, the eyes that watched our every move. I recall the day he was released, the mix of relief and uncertainty, and picking him up myself, helping him find a place to stay. Even as he stepped back into freedom, the shadow of incarceration remained, shaping his every movement, a reminder that the bars followed him beyond the prison walls.

Though far shorter, my experiences with jail left their mark. The confinement, the stripping away of identity and autonomy, taught me how it feels to be rendered small and unseen within an indifferent system. These experiences, both mine and my father’s, intertwine with the stories of the women who led us through the prison exhibition, their lives inscribed within the same relentless structure. Standing there, the memories wash over me, mingling with their stories until it becomes too much to contain.

Colors have increased in saturation, vivid Venice sun exploding from behind the dreary overcast experienced earlier. We see an elderly woman needing help with her walker by a bridge. I am a mess—tears streaming, a lit, hand-rolled cigarette in hand—but I carry her walker over the stair-stepped bridge (a small kindness amid my own grief). She thanks me, and I continue on alone; I wander the island, lost in thought for over an hour. Eventually, I find myself heading toward the vaporetto, the water taxi. And then, as I board, I see her again, seated quietly as the boat rocks gently through the waves, carrying me back into the evening. We share a brief smile before turning to the open water, an expanse that feels vast and unbounded. In that moment, freedom feels palpable—an open horizon untouched by walls. An individualized unity that civilization has commodified that it has internalized and contextualized. Incarceration, I realize, is more than confinement; it is the quiet erasure of that horizon, a closing off of what should be limitless.

“Only time I use a bar is to break open a door, that’s what bars are for” (Sole and DJ Pain 1).

Note: To keep in line with our experience, I have not included pictures from within the prison as we did not have any way of documenting them. For more information and examples of the collections visit: https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2024/holy-see.

‍

Works cited:

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Vintage Books, 1995. 

La Biennale di Venezia. "Holy See." Biennale Arte 2024, 2024, www.labiennale.org/en/art/2024/holy-see. Accessed 3 Nov. 2024.

Sole and DJ Pain 1. “Bars.” Vault 1312, Black Box Tapes, 2022.