Dread Scott makes revolutionary art to propel history forward, working in a range of media including performance, photography, screen-printing, video, installation and painting. He has exhibited and performed at numerous institutions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, the Walker Art Center and BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) and has been written about in numerous publications including The New York Times, Art In America, ArtNews, ArtForum, Art21 Magazine, The Guardian, and Time.
His ABOG Fellowship will support Slave Rebellion Reenactment (SRR), a conceptual community-engaged artwork that will reenact the largest rebellion of enslaved people in American history. It will re-stage and reinterpret Louisiana’s German Coast Uprising of 1811, involving hundreds of re-enactors on the outskirts of New Orleans, in the same locations where the 1811 rebellion occurred.
Artist portrait by Malik Cumbo.
Burning the US Constitution, 3 pigment prints, each print 26 x 20 in., 2011.
October Revolution Telegraph, Acrylic and Xerox transfer, 33 x 46 in., 2011.
On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide, performance still (1), pigment print, 22 x 30 in., 2014. A one-time performance by Dread Scott, referencing the 1963 Civil Rights struggle in Birmingham, Alabama.
Dread Scott: Decision, performance, duration: 1 hour 15 minutes, premiered at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), 2012. While artist Dread Scott read from the text of 1857 Supreme Court Dred Scott decision, four nude Black men were controlled by two live German Shepherd dogs and their handlers. The audience was simultaneously asked to go into a voting booth, for which they had to pass through the line of Black men.
Dread Scott: Decision, performance, duration: 1 hour 15 minutes, 2012.
Money to Burn, performance, 40 minutes with DVD documentation, 3 minutes, 2010. A performance by Dread Scott where he burned money in front of the NY Stock Exchange on June 22, 2010.
Wanted, community-based project: performance, meetings, Wanted posters, 2014. Wanted is a community-based art project that addresses the criminalization of youth, particularly Black and Latino youth, in America. Fake wanted posters were created for non-illegal activity that the police routinely harass the youth for. These were posted in shop windows in Harlem, NY.
Wanted, community-based project: performance, meetings, Wanted posters, 2014.
Wanted, community-based project: performance, meetings, Wanted posters, 2014.
What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag? Installation: Silver gelatin print, books, pens, shelf, active audience, US flag, 80 x 28 x 12 in., 1988.
Stop, 2-channel projected HD video, RT: 7 minutes 26 seconds, 2012. Stop, a video installation by Dread Scott, is a projection on two opposite walls of young adults from East New York, Brooklyn and Liverpool, UK who have been stopped numerous times by the police. In the video each repeatedly states the number of times they have been stopped.