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\n The artist Yan Pei-Ming was photographed in his Paris studio in 2016. \/ Credit:Alfred Weidinger|Flickr|CC BY 2.0<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Vatican City, Feb 12, 2025 \/ 14:20 pm (CNA).<\/p>\n
A Chinese artist\u2019s paintings of inmates living inside one of Rome\u2019s most well-known prisons will be projected on the prison building\u2019s exterior and displayed in a new exhibit space near the Vatican as part of 2025 Jubilee initiatives.<\/p>\n
The 64-year-old Yan Pei-Ming is a contemporary artist who has been living in France since 1981. He is known for his \u201cepic-sized\u201d portraits of figures such as Chairman Mao, St. Pope John Paul II, Bruce Lee, and Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
Pei-Ming\u2019s latest portrait series, 27 prisoners living inside Regina Coeli Prison, will be displayed on the side of the prison building. The works, created at the request of the Vatican\u2019s education and culture dicastery, will be the inaugural exhibit of a new art space on Via della Conciliazione, the main street leading to St. Peter\u2019s Basilica. <\/p>\n The Vatican will highlight the work of contemporary artists during the 2025 Jubilee Year and beyond with the new exhibit space, called \u201cConciliazione 5,\u201d to be inaugurated Feb. 15, during the Jubilee of Artists and the World of Culture.<\/p>\n The Vatican has planned a slew of events for the Feb. 15-18 Jubilee of Artists, including the opening of the contemporary art space, Sunday Mass with Pope Francis, and the first-ever visit by a pope to the film studios of Cinecitt\u00c3\u00a0.<\/p>\n The Vatican expects more than 10,000 people from across the wider art and cultural environments \u2014 hailing from over 100 countries and five continents \u2014 to participate in events over the four days.<\/p>\n The curator of the Yan Pei-Ming exhibit at \u201cConciliazione 5,\u201d Cristiana Perrella, told journalists on Wednesday that Pei-Ming created the 27 inmate portraits in a matter of 20 days late last year in a studio in Shanghai. Due to time constraints, the painter worked from photos and also asked for information about the prisoners\u2019 lives. <\/p>\n The portraits, Perrella said, help us to remember that inmates \u201care not the crime they have committed, that people\u2019s meanings are not in this \u2014 they are paying for a crime they have done \u2014 but \u2026 the people who live in the prison are alive, they have thoughts and dreams. And Pei-Ming\u2019s work helps us to remember all that, to look at the prison community with a different perspective. And that precisely is the strength of art, the strength of this project.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe theme of hope, strongly felt by Pope Francis, intersects humanity in places of hardship,\u201d Lina Di Domenico, the head of the prison administration department of Italy\u2019s Ministry of Justice, said on Feb. 12.<\/p>\n \u201cThe faces portrayed by artist Yan Pei-Ming,\u201d she said, \u201cprojected on the facade of Regina Coeli, will allow everyone to \u2018see\u2019 a cross-section of the humanity that lives beyond those walls, to approach a world as unknown and obscure to most as that of penal enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n Cardinal Jos\u00c3\u00a9 Tolentino de Mendon\u00c3\u00a7a said at a Feb. 12 press conference the purpose of the Jubilee Year initiatives is to cultivate a dialogue on hope: \u201cTo question how contemporary art can convey hope by reaching out to sensitive human places. To search together for spiritual and artistic expressions that can serve as grammars and poetries of hope for the contemporary time.\u201d<\/p>\n Concern for prisoners is strongly connected to the 2025 Jubilee and its theme of hope. For the first time, Pope Francis designated a jubilee Holy Door within a prison, opening the door<\/a> on Dec. 26, 2024, in Rome\u2019s Rebibbia Prison Complex.<\/p>\n Regina Coeli Prison, one of Rome\u2019s most well-known prisons, is just over half a mile from the Vatican.<\/p>\n Originally the site of a 17th-century convent, from which it gets its name, the Regina Coeli Prison was constructed in 1881 by the Italian government after the country\u2019s unification. A women\u2019s prison called the Mantellate was later built nearby, also on the site of a former convent.<\/p>\n In 2018, Pope Francis celebrated Holy Thursday Mass at the prison, washing the feet of 12 inmates. The prison was also visited by St. John XXIII in 1958, by St. Paul VI in 1964, and by St. John Paul II in 2000.<\/p>\n Another notable person to visit the prison was Mother Teresa, now St. Teresa of Calcutta, who attended Mass with some of the inmates in May 1994<\/a>.<\/p>\n The second artist to be featured in the \u201cConciliazione 5\u201d gallery space, Perrella said, will be an Albanian who immigrated to Italy in the 1990s. The artist\u2019s exhibit will be on the theme of \u201cjourney\u201d in the context of migration, the art curator said.<\/p>\n![\"One](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/christianpure.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/cq5dam.web.1280.1280.jpeg?quality=80&ssl=1\")