Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration

Marking Time is a powerful document of the inner lives and creative visions of men and women rendered invisible by America’s prison system.

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 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’sprisons 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.

Author(s): Nicole R. Fleetwood

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Paperback, Harvard University Press, 2020
240 p,  8 × 8 in.