Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
A Smithsonian Book of the Year
A New York Review of Books “Best of 2020” Selection
A New York Times Best Art Book of the Year
An Art Newspaper Book of the Year

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 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. 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 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.

"The beauty in these often painful images (like Muhammad al Ansi’s 2016 untitled painting of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler who drowned as his family sought refuge across the Mediterranean) powerfully reclaims the visual idea of what it means to be imprisoned. Fleetwood seeks to revise the mainstream media narrative…by letting us see the diverse array of ‘studio photos, handmade greeting cards, drawings and other pieces of art made by incarcerated people’ that offer a story we on the outside have never really heard." - New York Times Book Review

"[Fleetwood] brings together an impressive array of paintings, sculptures, murals, and photos that speak to the impact of incarceration on American life…In amplifying the stories of those marked by incarceration, she makes visible the individuals and families the carceral state has tried so hard to disappear and silence." - Los Angeles Review of Books

"An urgently political text…Fleetwood’s training as an art historian is evident, as her analysis follows a narrative arc that moves across artistic mediums and within the physical architecture of prison itself…Marking Time, however, never becomes too wrapped up in its own theory to forget that the prison industrial complex is a system of people, many of whom are the most vulnerable among us…Moves fluidly between this art historical survey and a sharp attention to the social apparatuses that have enabled the very foundation of the prison state." - The Nation

"In her groundbreaking and expansive book…Fleetwood has created something of a foundational index of prison art, an incisive guide to the multitudinous practices, aesthetics, styles, and conditions of art made by those in captivity. Fleetwood makes evident simultaneously the unique conditions of prison and the unique features of the art that is made there. Critically, Fleetwood’s book frees this art, and these artists, from prison as a delimited and marginalizing niche." - Artforum

"A thoroughly researched and heartbreakingly personal look at prison art and the broader visual culture of incarceration…Woven throughout the book are striking illustrations of the work of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists…While prisoners have been largely excluded from public life, the art and images Fleetwood highlights function as material traces of the disappeared, who, through acts of creation, refuse to be rendered invisible." - Art in America

"It’s so eloquently written and is the first book to explore art practices in proximity to the carceral state, representing more than a decade of research by Nicole and including the work of more than 70 artists." - Artnet News

"The United States has the largest population of captive human beings on the planet, some 2.5 million, in a prison-industrial complex that constitutes a punitive universe walled off the larger world. What takes place behind those walls? Deprivation and cruelty, but also art, as we learn from this absorbing book." - New York Times

"[An] ambitious book…Fleetwood deftly weaves personal narrative together with nuanced readings of artworks created by incarcerated people in order to illustrate how, in her own words, ‘art in prison is a practice of survival, an aesthetic journey that documents time in captivity, a mode of connecting with others.’…She models how creative expression can build the coalitions necessary for imagining and realizing a more just society." - Smithsonian

"Illuminates the creative process of artists working behind bars… Incorporating the work of artists within several different mediums—from painting and sculpture, to photography and bricolage—Marking Time explores how the creation of art in prison can disrupt institutionalized patterns of dehumanization… Makes visible the lives, experiences, and creativity of the incarcerated, a population which, despite being over two-million in size, remains largely either ignored or disparaged." - Arts Fuse

"At its heart, Marking Time is an abolitionist text, arriving during the recent international surge of the Black Lives Matter movement with a picture of mass incarceration as the less visible, but always present counterpart to police brutality…Thoughtful and stylistically accessible, Marking Time is meant for a broad audience across the inmates’ families, the academy, and the artworld…Frames art as a life-saving endeavor for many incarcerated artists." - Momus

"Fleetwood spent a decade researching the visual culture of the American penal system, and the product is as illuminating as it is heartbreaking." - ARTnews

"Introduced me to artists working outside of a hyper-monetized system and, equally incisively, highlights meaningful artistic practices operating with deep effect within and beyond our museums and galleries." - Art Newspaper

"Details the practices, products, and struggles of incarcerated artists...This drive to create art in prison illustrates convincingly that art and beauty are not merely added to an already good life; they’re more fundamental than that." - Splice Today

"[A] stunning work…Fleetwood has curated a compelling and soul stirring narrative that inspires. What is striking to the reader uninformed in the tradition of prison art is not just the high quality but the incredibly clever use of available materials…A statement about the massive strength of the human spirit." - Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Book Review

"As Fleetwood writes in her book, one of the calculated effects of incarceration is the breaking down of the prisoner’s sense of individuality and agency. Portraits, which are highly valued in prison communities, and self-portraits are an assertion of both…Her firsthand account of these realities, and their effect on her extended African-American family, forms the moving final chapter." - New York Times

"Dovetail[s] with newly invigorated debates about the systemic inequities that inform, and deform, the entire American criminal justice system, from the cop on the street to the courts to the penitentiary cages…So many of the images in the book…operate as nothing less than mechanisms of ecstasy—as means by which the artists might project themselves ‘out of place,’ beyond the spaces and systems of imprisonment. In doing so, they are also beginning to imagine life as it might otherwise be, with each creative effort attempting somehow to summon into existence a new, more human world." - Places

"Fleetwood takes on this subject with passion and originality, looking at how the creation of art liberates the incarcerated…Fleetwood writes with poignancy about the power imbalance between the prisoner and the omnipotent state, and how this is reflected in artistic production—on paper, as sculpture, and even from a bootlegged cellphone…Such a beautiful volume on such an agonizing topic." - Choice

"Marking Time is an unprecedented work built over nearly a decade of connection with currently and formerly incarcerated artists, their families, and community organizations working with incarcerated artists…Fleetwood’s care, delicacy, and rigor are a gift, and her ability to honor people subjected to incarceration is a guide for all readers, especially those trying to understand the life-shaping complexities of carceral systems." - Resources for Gender and Women's Studies