P&P Live!: Nicole R. Fleetwood - Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration – in conversation with Piper Kerman

A criminal justice reform activist and professor of American studies and art history at Rutgers, Fleetwood combines oral history, memoir, theory, and visual images for a powerful exploration of the role of art in the nation’s prisons. As the incarcerated population has surged to upwards of two million people, more and more of them have turned to art as a way to counter the dehumanizing aspects of prison life. Presenting a gallery of prisoners’ drawings, paintings, and sculptures—many published here for the first time —Fleetwood vividly documents the resilience of the incarcerated and shows how their creative testimony to the brutal realities of racism, poverty, and the justice system are opening new directions in American art.

Fleetwood will be in conversation with Piper Kerman, author of the memoir Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, which was adapted by Jenji Kohan into the Emmy Award-winning original series for Netflix.