Guantánamo Bay Ensigns: Material Rhetorics and Moath al-Alwi’s Ships

This chapter brings a material rhetorics approach to artwork by Moath al-Alwi. The chapter does a deep reading of the signification of the Joint Task Forces “Approved by US forces” stamp that marks the art produced in Guantánamo as property of the US government. It argues that the found nature of the objects that Moath reappropriates for aesthetic expression in his art, specifically in his model ships, retains traces of his everyday experience, making his art political. Ultimately, this chapter argues that Moath’s art, produced out of the material conditions of detention, is at once an archive of that state violence as well as testimony to and resistance to that violence.