Nicole R. Fleetwood’s Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration powerfully documents the inner lives and creative visions of men and women rendered invisible by America’s prisons. Despite the deprivations and cruelties being experienced behind bars, America’s prisons are filled with art.

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. The impact of their art, Fleetwood observes, can be felt far beyond prison  walls. Fleetwood is the James Weldon Johnson Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. A 2021 MacArthur Fellow, she is a writer, curator, and art critic whose interests include contemporary Black diasporic art and visual culture, photography studies, gender and feminist studies, and Black cultural history.

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