A unique art exhibition in Berlin's Kunstquartier Bethanien is displaying collaborative paintings created by approximately 40 men from Tegel Prison and open correctional facilities. The exhibition, titled "Beyond Right and Wrong: From Darkness to Light," features seven large-format canvases that serve as powerful testaments to art's role in prisoner rehabilitation.
The artworks themselves present a striking visual narrative. One massive canvas, measuring two meters high and three meters wide, displays a dense collection of symbols and images: a snowman, a black sheep, a labyrinth, airplanes, hundred-dollar bills, and various figures representing everyday life, personal experiences, and mythology. The overwhelming fullness of the composition creates a centerless painting filled with multiple stories, some hidden beneath layers of paint like simmering secrets. Among the most poignant scenes are a child walking along a touchingly lonely country road and a surreal image of a boy kissing his reflection while touching a hot iron as a mirror surface.
The Prisma Art Gallery project, founded in 2023, operates as a rehabilitation program using artistic methods to help reintegrate offenders into society. Three days a week, participants attend four different courses lasting three hours each, held in the facilities of Freie Hilfe Berlin e.V., an organization that has worked with prisoners for 35 years. The sessions combine painting with extensive conversation, employing therapeutic approaches at the intersection of art and healing without rigid concepts, focusing instead on experience, process, and human connection.
The collaborative nature of these works reflects the complex social dynamics within the group. Participants represent a cross-section of society's conflict potential: diverse temperaments, life stories, and nationalities converging in one space. These are individuals with criminal backgrounds shaped by power, violence, coldness, war, and trauma - some sentenced to fines, others to multi-year or life imprisonment.
Project leader Antje Kerl-Akkan emphasizes that these gatherings are far from cheerful recreational activities for art enthusiasts interested in painterly or technical refinements. "The participants typically have never had contact with art, and many initially considered it superfluous and especially unmanly," she explains. Born in West Berlin in 1965, Kerl-Akkan came to art as an assistant to artists and spent twelve years traveling through Turkey and various African, Arab, and Asian countries starting in the late 1980s. Spirituality and art have formed the central thread of her life and remain her primary sources of strength and work.
"The key is not technique, but an attitude that gives men space for their self-empowerment again," says Kerl-Akkan, who has worked in correctional facilities since 2018 and has earned a diploma in Spiritual Healing. Despite her spiritual background, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman appears remarkably down-to-earth rather than otherworldly.
One particularly dark large-scale painting titled "Childhood - 5 to 12 Years" exemplifies the emotional depth of the works. While art historical standards don't serve as the primary criterion, this "Social Sculpture" in the Beuysian sense makes the stories behind the visible consistently palpable, creating creative transformations and compelling symbolic charges in both abstract and figurative images.
Art historian, author, and curator Jan-Philipp Fruehsorge, who has operated in various positions within the art world for over 20 years and has supported the project for one year regarding professionalization and networking into the art scene, explains the therapeutic value: "Through artistic activities, participants reach inner layers and experiences that cannot be accessed purely through language. Psychologists and social workers ask different questions and belong to the justice apparatus, which triggers fears of negative evaluations."
The "Prisma" concept also represents a change of perspective - both for the offenders who view themselves differently and perceive new facets, and for exhibition visitors who discover things they weren't previously conscious of. This dual transformation lies at the heart of the rehabilitation process.
While programs like the justice-independent Prisma Art Gallery remain relatively rare in Germany, art and creativity are proving to be successful tools on the path back to society. In the United Kingdom, the Koestler Arts foundation, established by Hungarian-British writer Arthur Koestler, has successfully collaborated with prisoners and renowned artists since 1962, demonstrating the international recognition of such approaches.
The Berlin project's intuitive painting method bears witness to this success through seven visually powerful stations. The exhibition runs until October 16 at Kunstquartier Bethanien on Mariannenplatz 2, open daily from 11 AM to 6 PM, with final day hours from 11 AM to 2 PM. The collaborative artworks serve as compelling evidence that creative expression can unlock paths to healing and social reintegration that traditional rehabilitation methods alone cannot achieve.
