Deconstructing Detention Spaces through Art. The ReverseLab experience at Milan-San Vittore prison

San Vittore Prison and the city of Milan have long maintained a complicated and ambivalent relationship. Originally built at the end of the nineteenth century on a marginal site, the city’s expansion quickly overtook it, and today it stands as a detached presence in one of the most central districts. San Vittore symbolises an ongoing debate: some view the prison as an extraneous element to be removed from the urban fabric, while others argue that its urban location offers an opportunity for both the correctional institution and the surrounding area. In 2023, Laboratorio Carcere, a research group at the Politecnico di Milano, alongside other partners, conceived and implemented ReverseLab at San Vittore: a space for contemporary art situated between the prison and the city, with the aim of activating a “double gaze”: seeing the inside from the outside and the outside from the inside. Contemporary art was embraced as a tool to interpret this duality and to foster dialogue between the city and the prison. The project progressed along two complementary paths: a spatial intervention aimed at rehabilitating the first wing’s basement of the prison, which had been abandoned for years; and, in parallel, a participatory art workshop led by an artist that involved inmates and prison staff in the co-creation of an artwork reflecting life inside San Vittore. The exhibition of the work in the reclaimed space – Autumn 2024 – became a tangible encounter between internal and external communities. ReverseLab aims to trigger a process that returns a once-abandoned area to the prison and establishes a hybrid space, between artistic and rehabilitative practices that open to the city at scheduled times. This contribution offers a reflection on the potentials and challenges of an experience that seeks to promote the prison as a service to the community, fostering dialogue with other related initiatives.