Prison Art’의 유용성에 관한 소고-외국의 동향을 중심으로-

Abstract

Prison Art is a creative work of art by the inmates or the released prisoners who were practiced through Prison Art Programmes. Prison Art is distinctively and widely classified as one genre of art which reflects unusual psychological characteristics and cultural experiences of inmates. Moreover, Prison Art is different from 'Arts in Prison: educational art program for correctional purpose' and 'Correctional Works. While the other two lack in connectivity between producing art pieces and making a business of it, the inmates participate in production processes after obtaining the art skills from Prison Art Programmes. The usefulness of Prison Art is highly evaluated for having potential as a tool for correcting prisoners, producing and selling correctional works, and activating employment linkage. This paper introduces the overseas cases of Prison Art, which has not yet been academically established and has not been introduced in the domestic fields and practice. This paper also aims to be used in domestic related research and to find a possibility of application on inmate treatment. As relevant informations lack in Korea, this paper intends to review the foreign outstanding practices at an exploratory level and to suggest the applicability of employment linkage and art therapy program for the domestic field. To propose the applicability, this paper reviews the definition, history, and frequent form of Prison Art from the relevant foreign papers. Along with introducing the impressive cases of foreign prison art and analyzing the proposals of applicability, the main points of research are as follows. Among the research results of outstanding cases, 'The Prison Art Project' from Mexico, sales of bags and wallets with tattoo design from inmates, is introduced at first. 'The Prison Art Project' provides an exceptionally high income to the project participants comparing with other Mexican inmates with different occupations and suggests a collaboration of related institution after a discharge. Those two are the significant characteristics of 'The Prison Art Project'. Secondly, ‘The Pencil Is a Key’ from New York City is an exhibition that showed the historical flow of Prison Art and improved the bias on the prisoners and their artworks by regarding inmates as pure artists. Furthermore, 'CARE Project' held by WCCC(Women's Community Correction Center), the only women's prison in Hawaii, is another successful example of connecting inmate's art with local galleries and online markets after educating quilt to the inmates.