This talk will look at a sampling of Scott’s art from the past 25 years. He works in a range of media including installation, photography, screen printing, video and performance. The works he will present will look at themes including:
- American democracy’s roots in slavery and how that sets the stage for our present.
- The criminalization of black and Latino youth.
- The continuum connecting the civil rights movement in the 1960s to contemporary Black Lives Matter resistance to murder by police.
- Imagining a world free of oppression and exploitation.
Scott states: “This is a world where a tiny handful of people control the wealth and knowledge humanity as a whole has created. It’s a horror for most of humanity — a world of profound polarization, exploitation and suffering. Billions are excluded from intellectual development and full participation in society. We don’t have to live this way, and I make art as part of forging a radically different world. I will present and discuss revolutionary art to propel history forward.”
Dread Scott is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is exhibited across the U.S. and internationally. For three decades he has made work that encourages viewers to re-examine cohering norms of American society. In 1989, the entire U.S. Senate denounced and outlawed one of his artworks and President Bush declared it “disgraceful” because of its use of the American flag. His art has been exhibited/performed at MoMA/PS1, Pori Art Museum (Finland), BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) and galleries and street corners across the country. He is a recipient of grants from Creative Capital Foundation and the Pollock Krasner Foundation, and his work is included in the collection of the Whitney Museum.
