MoMA PS1 will open its doors to the timely exhibition, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, highlighting more than thirty-five artists reflecting on the growing COVID-19 crises in U.S. prisons.
The exhibition features work by people in prisons and work by non incarcerated artists, with a creative eye towards state repression, erasure, and imprisonment, and is on display across PS1’s first floor galleries.
The resulting work is often laborious, time-consuming, and immersive, as incarcerated artists manage penal time through their work and experiment with the material constraints that shape art making in prison. The exhibition also includes work made by nonincarcerated artists—both artists who were formerly incarcerated and those personally impacted by the US prison system. From various sites of freedom or unfreedom, these artists devise strategies for visualizing, mapping, and making physically present the impact and scale of life under carceral conditions. Alongside the exhibition, a series of public programs, education initiatives, and ongoing projects will explore the social and cultural impact of mass incarceration.
Marking Time is organized by guest curator Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood, Professor of American Studies and Art History at Rutgers University, and reflects her decade-long commitment to the research, analysis, and archiving of the visual art and creative practices of incarcerated artists and art that responds to mass incarceration. The exhibition follows the release of Fleetwood’s new book, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration.
Participating artists include Carole Alden; American Artist; Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter aka Isis tha Saviour; Sara Bennett; Conor Broderick; Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick; Daniel McCarthy Clifford; Tameca Cole; Larry Cook; Russell Craig; Amber Rose Daniel; Halim Flowers; Nereida García-Ferraz; Maria Gaspar; Dean Gillispie; GisMo (Jessica Gispert and Crystal Pearl Molinary); Ronnie Goodman; Gary Harrell; Brian Hindson; James “Yaya” Hough; Ashley Hunt; Michael Iovieno; Jesse Krimes; Susan Lee-Chun; William B. Livingston III; Mark Loughney; Ojore Lutalo; Bob McKay, Donald, Kit, Charlie, and Lopez; Cedar Mortenson; George Anthony Morton; Jesse Osmun; Jared Owens; Rowan Renee; Gilberto Rivera; Billy Sell; James Sepesi; Welmon Sharlhorne; Sable Elyse Smith; Justin Sterling; Todd (Hyung-Rae) Tarselli; Jerome Washington; and Aimee Wissman.
Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration will be on view from September 17, 2020 through April 4, 2021 at MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens. Reserve your ticket. Visit safely.
Over the years, exhibitions of beautiful and thought-provoking work created by those incarcerated, and/or people close to them, have been on view. Here are two exhibitions that were on our list ~ Earlier this year, The Ford Foundation opened its doors to Per(Sister): Incarcerated Women of Louisiana, and in 2017, John Jay College of Criminal Justice presented the exhibition, Ode to the Sea: Art from Guantanamo.