Marking Time, Nicole R. Fleetwood
Marking Time, Nicole R. Fleetwood
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Marking Time
Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration

Author: Nicole R. Fleetwood

Narrator: Adenrele Ojo

Unabridged: 11 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/17/2021

Categories: Nonfiction, Art


Synopsis

More than two million people 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 deprivation and abuse 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.

As the movement to transform 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.

About Nicole R. Fleetwood

Nicole R. Fleetwood is professor of American studies and art history at Rutgers University. Her work on art and mass incarceration has been featured at the Aperture Foundation and the Zimmerli Museum of Art, and her exhibitions have been praised by the New York Times, the Nation, the Village Voice, and the New Yorker. She is the author of On Racial Icons and the prizewinning Troubling Vision.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jamie on August 08, 2020

Throw away your "anti-racist" canon and read this instead. End Prison.......more

Goodreads review by Piper on September 13, 2020

This beautiful book is both deeply personal and moving while also academically rigorous and provocative. It shows the purposes and place of art in the lives of incarcerated people, their families and communities. Fleetwood's work also makes clear art's central, irreplaceable role in confronting and......more

Goodreads review by Marie on February 22, 2021

This book is specifically about art created by those who are incarcerated. I saw in it my library's Wowbrary long ago and thought I'd get it to see some good art in unique mediums. Turns out it is SO much more! Nicole Fleetwood (the author; a professor at Rutgers who has done a ton of research on in......more

Goodreads review by Caitlin on October 02, 2024

Read for my thesis :)......more

Goodreads review by Julie on October 17, 2021

Well written book, but the the pictures are small, grainy, and look like pictures of pictures on cheap paper. Better photography with a higher resolution, better quality paper, and more pictures would've made a stronger point, especially if the book is supposed to be about art. It is a good book abo......more