Contemporary artist Dread Scott will deliver a free, public talk titled “Activism and the Erasure of Subversive Art: Imagine a World without America” on Wednesday, April 4, at 7 p.m. in the Gallery Theatre of the Elaine Langone Center. A reception with Scott will follow in the Samek Art Museum. The event is the latest in the Griot Institute for Africana Studies’ spring lecture series, “Erasure: Blackness and the Fight Against Invisibility.”
Scott’s talk will look at a sampling of his 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 identity and patriotism
- 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 makes revolutionary art to propel history forward. His work has been included in recent exhibitions at MoMA PS1, the Walker Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum and the Pori Art Museum in Finland, as well as on view in “America is Hard to See,” the Whitney Museum’s inaugural exhibition in its new building. In 2012, the Brooklyn Academy of Music presented his performance “Dread Scott: Decision” as part of their 30th anniversary “Next Wave Festival.”
This talk is co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History and the Samek Art Museum. It is also made possible through the support of the University Lectureship Committee.
Contact the Griot Institute at 570-577-2123, or griot@bucknell.edu for more information.