While calling to mind the slab where Victor Frankenstein created his monster, this photograph was taken in the morgue of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp.

Commonly called Gitmo, the US military prison in Cuba was established by the George W. Bush administration as part of the “War on Terror.” Ostensibly created to detain extraordinarily dangerous people, interrogate them in an optimal setting, and to prosecute them for war crimes, in practice it has been used for the indefinite detention of prisoners who have been denied due process of law. The Bush administration asserted that detainees were neither entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention nor the U.S. Constitution.

During the Obama administration, the number of inmates was reduced from 245 to 41 with most former detainees freed or transferred. In January 2018, Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep the prison camp open indefinitely.

Guantanamo is emblematic of human rights abuses perpetrated in the name of the fight against terrorism. This exhibition explores the idea that monsters can take many forms.