Dicastery for Culture and Education

Press Release

“Contemporary art in prison: the challenge of hope”

Just a few days before the solemn opening of the Holy Year, the Holy See Dicastery for Culture and Education announces its contemporary art programme, which aims to place at the centre of reflection the relationship between creative inspiration and the fundamental elements of the great spiritual event that will characterize the path of the Universal Church for the new year, starting with Hope, a concept to which Pope Francis principally refers in the Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee 2025, Spes non confundit.

In continuity with the project of the Holy See Pavilion, linked to the theme of human rights and the figure of the last among us, which the Dicastery presented at the 60th International Art Exhibition - Venice Biennale, it was chosen to start the art programme by continuing the journey inside prisons, with new collaborations and artistic interventions.

The Jubilee will begin on Christmas Eve, with the opening of the Holy Door at Saint Peter’s by Pope Francis. This will be followed, according to the established schedule, by the opening of other Holy Doors in Rome and around the world; the second Holy Door that Pope Francis will open on 26 December, at Rome's Rebibbia prison, will be emblematic.

Accompanying this gesture will be the first of the projects that Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, presented today in the press conference at the Vatican Press Office.

His Eminence Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça explains that “the important thing is for us all to believe that transformation – ours and that of the world – is possible. Even if it is arduous and painful, it is possible. When we look at, and let ourselves be looked at as brothers and sisters, this great miracle takes place, which is the common weaving of hope”.

The Ministry of Justice – Department of Prison Administration, through the words of the Department Head Giovanni Russo, expresses great joy for this new joint project with the Holy See: “The fruitful collaboration begun some time ago between the Holy See and the Ministry of Justice - Department of Prison Administration (DAP) in view of the Jubilee 2025 continues. We have responded with enthusiasm and with a great organizational effort to the Holy Father's desire to open wide, even in our prisons, the doors of Hope and Providence, starting with the Holy one, which He Himself will open next 26 December in the Rome Rebibbia Prison. It will be for everyone - inmates, staff, operators and volunteers - a moment of communion and prayer, in order to live to the fullest the time of grace of the Jubilee. With the Holy See, we have planned other important initiatives, including those of particular artistic merit, which will soon involve the people and the reality of other penitentiary institutes, starting with the one that in the coming months will be carried out in collaboration with the Regina Coeli Prison”.

In Rebbibia, on the occasion of the opening of the second  Holy Door, the Dicastery, with the curatorship of Cristiana Perrella, has invited the artist Marinella Senatore to produce a site-specific project of participatory art: the work Io contengo moltitudini, a self-supporting vertical structure, about 6 metres high and with a diameter of about 3 metres, composed of lights and elements bearing phrases in different languages and dialects. These phrases were chosen from those written by inmates of the men's and women's sections following a workshop for about 60 participants, in which the artist and the curator presented the project, recounting the meaning and objectives of the installation and introducing the theme of the Jubilee 2025, Hope.

The work will be installed in the square in front of the church of the Rome Rebibbia Prison, starting on 21 December, and will remain up until mid-February, visible to the inmates and the entire prison community.

As Marinella Senatore states, “Io contengo moltitudini is a light installation created in collaboration with the Rebibbia community. In its form, it takes the form of a vertical structure that evokes the machines used in the fireworks of Roman Baroque festivities. In my practice, the works are first and foremost shared and transformative experiences, reflecting my ongoing commitment to active participation and collective collaboration. The selected phrases, collected together with community members, are powerful expressions of hope and are woven into a common narrative through which the work becomes a place of encounter and sharing. The illuminations, inspired by the popular traditions of Southern Italy and realized in collaboration with local craftsmen, become ephemeral architectures that create opportunities for encounter and participation. Light has the ability to transform a place into a special space where special things can happen”,

Cristiana Perrella will also be the curator for the 2025 programme of the new exhibition space of the Dicastero, called Conciliazione 5. The space, a window open 24 hours a day on Via della Conciliazione within which the invited artists will intervene, also dialoguing with other spaces in the vicinity, will allow all pilgrims to admire the works on display.

The first artist called upon to open Conciliazione 5 will be Yan Pei-Ming, famous for his intense large-scale portraits. He will produce a body of new work on the Regina Coeli prison that will be unveiled on the occasion of the Jubilee of Artists (15-18 February 2025).

“It is a great honour and joy for me”, says Cristiana Perrella, “to have been entrusted with the task of curating, during the Jubilee, a project such as this, which stems from a full faith in art and in its possibility of measuring itself against the great themes of the present in a free and profound way, generating change. Art, in fact, solicits a different way of seeing and understanding things, challenging conventions and generating new questions, new thoughts and thus opening up the possibility of transformation. The decision to continue, with the first two projects entrusted to me, the work on the prison begun with the Pavilion of the Holy See at the Venice Biennale is a clear sign on the part of the commission of this trust. Art is once again called upon to give voice to the invisible, to those who live on the margins of society, and to open our eyes to an urgent issue - very dear to Pope Francis - which today has no place in public debate and on which there is little willingness to listen. Both projects arise from active collaboration with the prison community, not only prisoners and inmates but also those who work in the prison. I would like to thank the DAP for this opportunity and the directors of the three institutions we worked with for their openness and availability”.

Cardinal de Mendonça points out that “sometimes art is considered a luxury destined for the enjoyment of the few. Instead, art carries within itself a greater desire: it wants to think about and mirror the human condition of everyone; it wants to surprise by its extraordinary capacity to take an interest in all that is human. For this reason, experiences that bring contemporary artistic production to sensitive places of existence, where bare questions are touched upon, are very important. Prisons are such places. Art can be the voice and face of dramas that usually remain invisible and can make societies more aware of their very high responsibility, which is always a responsibility that obliges us to an active and shared citizenship”,

It is precisely for this reason that the language of art will accompany prisoners and prison communities during the Jubilee with a further project: The Doors of Hope. In analogy with the artistic door realized in Rebibbia, a number of Doors of Hope will be opened in various prisons in Italy and around the world. These will be installations entrusted to as many internationally renowned artists who, in dialogue and in collaboration with the prisoners, will produce these works to be placed outside the prisons, visible in this way to the city and offered not only to art enthusiasts but also to the public.

The intention is once again to deepen the fruitful and promising dialogue between the reality of prison and the world of contemporary art; the aim of the project is to encourage and support the experiences that accompany prisoners to live their stay in penitentiaries in a rehabilitative manner, preparing them to re-enter society. But a second aim is equally urgent, the cultural and spiritual conversion, of hearts and eyes, that society has on prison, to be considered increasingly as a place of rehabilitation and not of punishment.

Davide Rampello, artistic curator of the project, assisted by the artistic direction entrusted to Rampello & Partners, states that “Prison is sometimes considered a place abandoned by hope: a place not hoped for. To open reason and the heart to the values of hope is to indicate a goal, to re-propose a life project. We want to entrust this very delicate task to the sensitivity, to the care of artists who will share this mission with us, so that they may make it a movement, a manifesto, so that the force of the true, the just, the good, the beautiful becomes a work of art, concrete beauty. Baudrillard liked to interpret concreteness as the force of a community that believes. By co-believing, prisoners and all of us, we will make hope co-created and beauty will have the strength to evolve our feeling, allowing our gaze also to be nurtured by this virtue”.

For the national and international press:

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