Artists Map: Prisons, Systems, Structure

Despite renewed calls for abolition and criticism
of "mass incarceration," the USA continues to have
the largest prison and jail population in modern
history globally. With a cultural imagination that
is littered with images of imprisonment,
criminality, the thrill of law breaking and the
vilification of otherness, we also have a new
vocabulary for the racism, classism and
heteropatriarchy of criminal justice and
punishment. This class will give us a critical
introduction to this discourse and how it is
spreading around the world through decolonial and
anti-racist movements, while studying the ways in
which representations of the prison, punishment
and liberation inhabit our art historical canons,
and how artists have addressed large and abstract
systems in their works and communities.