Feminist Approaches to Participatory Art

�RESEARCHING WOMEN’S PRISONS IN PERU

​

Lucia Bracco

Camila Rodrigo

​

Presentation for the International Justice Arts Network

December 2025

• Peru is located in South America and has a population of 33 million people.
• 7 presidents in less than a decade – Of them
• 4 former presidents in prison, and more in corruption processes.
• Organized crime:
• Since 2019, extortion reports per 100,000 inhabitants have increased sixfold at the national level.
• By September 2025, 1,513 homicides have been recorded.
• Multiple citizen protests demanding that the state provide greater security and take stronger action against organized crime
• The current president, José Jeri, has strengthened the punitive populist turn by implementing “States of Emergency” and the supposed control of organized crime through inspections and prisoners’ transfers.
• High percentage of citizen’s approval.

2

Some context….

• Peru has 68 prisons, 13 of which are “exclusively” for women.
• PEPO: 103, 342 (INPE, September 2025).
• 5.25% are women.

​

Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

2505 inspections nationwide between July and November 2025 (INPE, 2025) – 25% more than 2024.

This project uses prison as a visual metaphor to explore how the systems punish and control women in everyday life. We facilitate collage workshops in Peru with incarcerated women and in Turkey with female students.

• Peru has 68 prisons, 13 of which are “exclusively” for women.

• This project was conducted in one of these women’s prisons located in Lima, capital of Peru.

This activity is framed within the projects: “Women’s Symbolic Prisons-Agencies: A Latin America- Middle Eastern Dialogue”, funded by SOAS, and “Women’s imprisonment experiences through collage” funded by PUCP.

¿What is a prison?

5

Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

6

Society – Prison Relationship: The prison is perceived as separate from society/ fragmentation between the inside and the outside.

​

Total power of authorities: Hierarchical power dynamics, with a binary and rigid perspective.

​

View of the subject: Identity mortification as a result of the harms of prisoners

​

Prison subcultures emerge: Establishing an informal and parallel order.

7

Traditional view of prisons

SOCIETY

Punitive control, submission, and discipline through work and other activities.

Prisons in the Global South

Relationship staff-prisoners: negotiated and dynamic. Self and co-government

​

The subject: active and participative, based on agency.

​

Relationship Society-Prison: permeability between “inside” and “outside”

​

8

SOCIETY

Expansion of control system, negotiations and flexibility.

PRISON

• Decolonize and depatriarchalize knowledge: How we understand prisons and prisoners?

​

• Create situated knowledge that creates awareness of particularities and in dialogue with global context

​

• Acknowledge prisons as contradictory sites of oppression while simultaneously spaces of resistance, and prisoners as vulnerable-agentic subjects.

​

• Take into account relations not as uni-directional, but rhizomatic

​

• The importance of intersectionality to understand prisons experiences.

9

¿Why participatory artistic methodologies in prisons?

10

The importance of decolonize-depatriarchalize methodologies

• To decolonize-depatriarchalize knowledge it's necessary to also re-configure how we produce it, and to imagine other ways on how it is created.

​

• Participatory processes aim to question traditional power dynamics between researcher and participants with the aim to co-create knowledge

​

• Artistic methodologies seek to move beyond verbal expression as the privileged-rational way to understand experiences, to give space to different self expression.

11

Participatory-artistic methodologies in prison

From an “individual” perspective

​

A tool for self-discovery and resistance

​

It provides autonomy within an oppressive space: is a “performative act of resistance”

​

It gives “other” ways of looking at themselves, challenging the reductive “criminal” label imposed on prisoners, fostering resistance to stigmatization and exclusion

​

From an “collective” perspective

​

It fosters collaboration and sense of community

​

It act as a “bridge” of connection where participants share experiences

​

It humanises a space that commonly stigmatizes

​

It is a political tool to connect the “inside” and “outside” of prisons

12

The importance of the creative process instead of the product

Project Women's Symbolic Prisons-Agencies

13

Our project

We worked in “Anexo Mujeres de Chorrilos” Prison: the second largest female prison in Peru.

​

• This is a maximum-security institution with an official capacity of 288.
• There are currently 591 female prisoners.
• Most of them for Drug-Trafficking with long sentences.

14

Methodology

• Participatory workshops to produce collages.
• First participatory process (2024): reflect and visualize their idea of Prisons, Freedom and Femininity. Nuclear group of 10 women.
• Second participatory process (2025): reflect and create messages about their experiences to the “outside”. Nuclear group of 30 women.

​

• More presence and legitimacy inside the prison. The first participatory process ended with an internal exhibition of the work.

​

15

16

Main Reflections

​

​

​

"This is who I am... how I feel... Behind what I show, I have open wounds. I am fragile, sometimes anxious because of everything I have been through... A crying eye, the urge to scream many times... But the butterfly is there because I also think about my future in freedom and about fighting today so I don’t die tomorrow."

​

17

18

1. Collage and the Intermingled Representation of Femininity, Confinement, and Freedom

​

• Collage challenges fixed narratives, allowing participants to reinterpret their identity and prison experience.

​

• Through visual expression, symbols and imagery create a different way of communication with others. Generating reflections and concepts around themes as confinement and femininity that can be really difficult to put in words.

​

19

20

2. Collage as silent solidarity and individual expression

• Silence in prison is often a sign of control and isolation. However, through the creative process of collage, it became a space of resistance, autonomy, and agency.

​

• Beyond verbal communication, interaction manifested through gestures and silent actions, such as sharing images, saving materials for others, exchanging resources, or simply observing in silence—either their own creative process or that of others.

​

• Thus, an individual and collective language emerged, marked by mutual understanding and silent solidarity, where art not only expressed emotions but also challenged isolation and strengthened the sense of community within confinement.

21

"This is me, and this is my mind, which is full of thoughts... the demons that accompany me every day. That’s why I try to disconnect, but there’s so much gossip around here... and there’s always someone watching you. The only thing that gives me peace in the midst of all this is my family."

22

Individual expression in a space of homogenization: Enables participants to challenge the stigmatized identity of “prisoner”.�Each participant develops a unique artistic language, asserting their subjectivity within confinement.

23

"I am in the choir... and music is what keeps me... like it says, it saved me from going down the wrong path... the kittens because I like them... they are cute... and sometimes that's good too, being at peace with myself... these are like different pieces of me... I think I identify with these women... they convey something to me."

24

3. Tunnels and relational dynamics between “inside” and “outside”

​

The research team as facilitators and intermediaries:

​

• The research team not only organized the workshops, but also symbolically represented the outside world.

​

• The research team served as a bridge between prisoners women and society, challenging the fragility of these relationships.

​

• The team’s consistent presence transformed participants’ perception of "outsiders", fostering a space of trust and mutual recognition.

25

3. Tunnels and relational dynamics between “inside” and “outside”

​

The integration of families and loved ones into the artistic process:

​

• Families were indirectly integrated into the workshops by sending photographs which were incorporated into the collages.

​

• These photographs carried symbolic and affective significance, allowing women to weave their family ties into the creative process.

​

• The research team acted as intermediaries, facilitating communication and strengthening affective bonds between the "inside" and the "outside"​.

​

26

27

“I wanted to make one with my family, you know, because they are the most important thing I have…my children give me the strength that sometimes gets taken away from me here…oh and my little cat”

3. Tunnels and relational dynamics between “inside” and “outside”

​

The expositions that aim to reconfigure perceptions of imprisoned women.

​

• The exhibitions, held both inside and outside the prison, open spaces for dialogue with society.

​

• Through their collages, participants challenge stereotypes and reclaim their identities.

​

• Art transcends personal expression to become a political act that disrupts and reconfigures hegemonic perceptions of prisoners women​.

​

28

29

Conclusions