Art of Captivity / Arte del Cautiverio (University of Toronto Press, 2020), co-authored with Kevin Lewis O’Neill, is a full-length, Spanish/English ethnography with 66 color photographs. The book explores the Pentecostal drug rehabilitation centres of Guatemala City and how those held inside these centres (often against their will) turn to art-making with found objects and innovative supplies to create a sense of meaning and purpose.

The book makes two claims: first, it argues that societies have become subject both to a logic of abandonment and to large-scale regimes of captivity. Second, by taking seriously the cultural production of a population held hostage by the war on drugs, the book upsets an epistemological hierarchy by positing that images, like words, can make an argument. See our latest international virtual exhibition and watch the book launch with Jon Lee Anderson of The New Yorker at www.artofcaptivity.com.