Artists Space

Artists Space Dialogues:
Jackie Wang with Nicole R. Fleetwood

Conversation
November 10, 2020, 8pm

Carceral Aesthetics and the Politics of Love

This series of Dialogues opens opens with Jackie Wang and writer, curator, and art critic Nicole R. Fleetwood discussing carceral aesthetics, the legacy of revolutionary prison arts programs, and the ways that penal space, time, and matter shape the production of prison art. What kinds of worlds and images of freedom have been imagined by prisoners and those with loved ones in prison? What forms of care are embodied by social practices rooted in art-making? Fleetwood is Professor of American Studies and Art History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She curated the exhibition Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, currently on view at MoMA PS1 following the release of her book by the same name, published by Harvard University Press.

A swirling cloud of grey mist covers most of a figures face. Slivers of their eyes and mouth are revealed through holes in the blanket of grey.
Tameca Cole, Locked in a Dark Calm, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Ellen Driscoll [A swirling cloud of grey mist covers most of a figures face. Slivers of their eyes and mouth are revealed through holes in the blanket of grey.]

Artists Space Dialogues is an ongoing series in which an invited curator brings together influential figures in contemporary art and culture to join them in a series of three in-depth public discussions. Our fall series is organized by Jackie Wang, a black studies scholar, prison abolitionist, poet, musician, and author of Carceral Capitalism (Semiotext(e), 2018).

This program will be streamed online via Zoom as part of Artists Space Dialogues.

Artists Space Dialogues: Jackie Wang with Nicole R. Fleetwood. Dialogue Documentation. Tuesday, November 10, 2020, 8pm. Artists Space, New York. [Video documentation of multiple individuals engaged in dialogue with the use of imagery]

Jackie Wang is a student of the dream state, black studies scholar, prison abolitionist, poet, performer, and trauma monster and is currently a Heilbroner Center Fellow and Assistant Professor of Culture and Media Studies at The New School’s Eugene Lang College. She is the author of Carceral Capitalism (Semiotexte / MIT Press), on the racial, economic, political, legal, and technological dimensions of the US carceral state. In her most recent work, she has been researching the bail bonds industry and the history of risk assessment in criminal justice. A collection of her poetry, The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us From the Void is forthcoming from Nightboat books.

Nicole R. Fleetwood is a writer, curator, and professor of American Studies and Art History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her books are Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (2020), On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination (2015), and Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness (2011). She is co-editor of Aperture magazine’s “Prison Nation,” a special issue focusing on photography’s role in documenting mass incarceration, and co-curator of Aperture’s touring exhibition of the same title. Fleetwood has co/curated exhibitions on art and mass incarceration at Andrew Freedman Home, Aperture Foundation, Cleveland Public Library, MoMA PS1, the Zimmerli Art Museum, and the Urban Justice Center. Her work has been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, NYPL’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, ACLS, Whiting Foundation, Denniston Hill Residency, Schomburg Center for Scholars-in-Residence, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the NEH.

Program support for Artists Space is provided by The Friends of Artists Space, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, The Cy Twombly Foundation, The David Teiger Foundation, The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The New York Community Trust, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, The Willem de Kooning Foundation, The Danielson Foundation, The Fox Aarons Foundation, Herman Goldman Foundation, The Destina Foundation, The Luce Foundation, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, VIA Art Fund, Arison Arts Foundation, The Chicago Community Fund, The David Rockefeller Fund, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, The Jill and Peter Kraus Foundation, The Richard Pousette-Dart Foundation.