Dread Scott

Interdisciplinary artist and activist Dread Scott has spent his career using art to disrupt norms, question corrupt systems of power, and ignite necessary political conversations. His work, he writes, “looks towards an era without exploitation or oppression,” challenging the notion that current political and economic structures of America as inevitable. In 1989, his now-iconic artwork What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag? was denounced by President George H.W. Bush and the U.S. Senate. The resulting Supreme Court case cemented its place in art history as a touchstone for debates about patriotism and dissent.

Scott works in a range of media from performance and photography to screen-printing and video, inviting audiences to confront the colonial and capitalist contradictions at the heart of American democracy. In 2024 The All African People’s Consulate was included in the Venice Biennial, and in 2019 Slave Rebellion Reenactment was profiled in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, and CNN. His work has been included in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, the Walker Art Center, Cristin Tierney Gallery and is in the collection of the Whitney Museum, Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The National Gallery of Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was a 2023 Rome Prize Fellow and has also received fellowships from John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and United States Artists.

Presented by UBC’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs in partnership with The Polygon Gallery.

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