Nicole R. Fleetwood's work delves into the intersection of art and mass incarceration. She critically examines how visual culture reflects and shapes our understanding of the carceral system and racial injustice in the United States. Fleetwood analyzes how artworks and visual representations reveal the social and political consequences embedded within this system. Her insightful approach offers a profound exploration of the intricate connections between art, race, and repression.
Nicole Fleetwood enters American prisons to explore the creativity flourishing there. Though isolated and degraded, incarcerated artists produce bold works that testify to the economic and racial injustice of American punishment. These pieces, many published here for the first time, offer a new vision of freedom for the twenty-first century.
Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the Justice System features work by artists from across the nation that addresses the criminal justice system, mass incarceration, and the prison-industrial complex. Representing the full range of contemporary art production made in the studio and the social realm, the exhibition includes artworks that take social justice issues as a subject matter; and position the prison and court systems as structures for dismantling through institutional critique. The artworks in the exhibition are extraordinary for the scale and ambition by which they mobilize in order to bring visibility to offenses within the justice system.