Now at Playwrights: Dread Scott

Dread Scott's White People Can't Be Trusted with Power, photo by Marc J. Franklin

2021 Guggenheim Fellow Dread Scott's oeuvre of artwork is public in both form and politic. The materials and styles of his pieces are wide-ranging: billboards and flags and ledgers, paintings and workshops and t-shirts, stickers and money and people. What remains constant is his commitment to revolution, borne out through transgressive performances and installations that bring American histories of lynchings, slave rebellions, and court decisions into the present. Today's drone strikes, police killings, and foreign wars are the violent legacies of a violent past. Scott aims to bring these violences to light, often by engaging directly with the public, with the people themselves: tourists and Wall Street brokers, museum-goers and passersby, firefighters and protestors.

Dread Scott, photographed by Sebastian Kim for "Dred Scott's Rebellion" in Vanity Fair.

About Dread Scott 
Dread Scott makes revolutionary art to propel history forward. His work is exhibited across the US and internationally. In 1989, his art became the center of national controversy over its transgressive use of the American flag, while he was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Dread became part of a landmark Supreme Court case when he and others defied the new law by burning flags on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. He has presented at TED talk on this. Dread’s studio is now based in Brooklyn. His work has been included in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, the Walker Art Center, Jack Shainman Gallery, and Gallery MOMO in Cape Town, South Africa, and is in the collection of the Whitney Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. His performances have been presented at BAM and on the streets of Harlem, NY. He is a 2019 Open Society Foundations Soros Equality Fellow and has received grants and fellowships from United States Artists and Creative Capital Foundation.

Dread Scott's White People Can't Be Trusted with Power, photo by Marc J. Franklin

Image of an early 20th century soldier, crouching while wearing a gas mask, is pasted over the right side of an American Eagle ad. On the left side the same ad, a young male model crouches in front of a scenic road on the highway.

A Man Was Lynched By Police Yesterday, a piece by Dread Scott that was the focus of a 2015 New York Times article "Does This Flag Make You Flinch?"

Black and white cut outs of two women stand at opposite ends of a yellow 'Please stand this far apart' sign inside Montrose subway station

An image from Dread Scott: Decision, a 2013 "performance that reflects on a country whose democracy is rooted in slavery." See more photos and learn more here.

Black and white cutout of dog with gas mask stands on a NYC subway seat

Dread Scott’s Sign of the Times, 2001, installed near Barclays Center in New York at a protest of the death of George Floyd and as seen in Art in America here.

Toilet seat cover, inside of dispenser, reads 'Pull For Latest Statement From Mitch McConnell' and is signed JB

Dread Scott's On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide, a2014 "performance about the struggle for freedom."  See more photos and learn more here.

Black and white image of little girl with gas mask, pasted on top of the 14th Street subway sign

Dread Scott's Slave Rebellion Reenactment, a 2019 "community performance spanning 24 miles over two days." See more photos and learn more here.

Artist Jilly Ballistic's back is to the camera as she installs a piece in the subway. It is a black and white image of a black boy.

Dread Scott's White Male Running, 2020, which is part of a billboard project organized by Art At a Time Like This and Save Art Space.

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