Research Catalog

Marking time art in the age of mass incarceration

Title: Marking time [electronic resource] : art in the age of mass incarceration / Nicole R. Fleetwood.
Author: Fleetwood, Nicole R.
Publication: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2020.

Available Online

Details

Description

1 online resource (xxvi, 323 pages) : illustrations.

Summary

"More than two million men and women are currently behind bars in the United States. Incarceration not only separates the imprisoned from their families and communities, it also exposes them to shocking levels of violence and sexual assault and subjects them to the arbitrary cruelties of the criminal justice system. Yet, as Nicole Fleetwood reveals, America's prisons are filled with art. Despite the isolation and degradation they experience, the incarcerated are driven to assert their humanity in the face of a system that dehumanizes them. Based on interviews with currently and formerly incarcerated artists, prison visits, and the author's own family experiences with the penal system, Marking Time shows how the imprisoned turn ordinary objects into elaborate works of art. Working with meager supplies and in the harshest conditions-including solitary confinement-these artists find ways to resist the brutality and depravity that prisons engender. The impact of their art, Fleetwood observes, can be felt far beyond prison walls. Their bold works, many of which are being published for the first time in this volume, have opened new possibilities in American art. As the movement to reform the country's criminal justice system grows, art provides the imprisoned with a political voice. Their works testify to the economic and racial injustices that underpin American punishment and offer a new vision of freedom for the twenty-first century"--

Uniform Title

Marking time (Online)

Alternative Title

Marking time (Online)

Subject

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Access (note)

Access restricted to authorized users.

Contents

Carceral aesthetics: penal space, time, and matter -- State goods: clandestine practices and prison art collectives -- Captured by the frame: photographic studies of prisoners -- Interior subjects: portraits by incarcerated ̜̜artists -- Fraught imaginaries: collaborative art in prison -- Resisting isolation: art in solitary confinement -- Posing in prison: family photographs, practices of belonging, and carceral landscapes.

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