Name: Dread Scott: The Body Politic
Start: 2026-10-04T11:00:00-0700
End: 2026-10-04T17:00:00-0700

Join us for our annual San Francisco/ Bay Area Black Art week from Wednesday September 30th - Sunday October 4th, 2026!

Dread Scott: The Body Politic

Sunday October 4, 2026 11:00am - 5:00pm PDT

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts @ 701 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA

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Dread Scott: The Body Politic brings together work that reflects Dread Scott’s longtime commitment to art that confronts political issues and interrogates American patriotism.

On view in the exhibition are two newly commissioned projects, as well as a selection of pre-existing works. Defending the Flag is a durational performance piece in which a guard dressed in military uniform stands in front of a U.S. flag on a flagpole while holding a military rifle, crystallizing social power dynamics in the form of a charged encounter between the state and the public. The second commissioned piece is a monumental work on canvas made up of dozens of body prints—ethereal and abstract, while giving form to the latent strength of a united body politic. In addition to these new pieces, The Body Politic will include a large screenprint on canvas titled Imagine a World Without America (Green Land) (2025), as well as a group of pre-existing body prints, evincing the artist’s long-time engagement with this form of image-making.

At once cool and confrontational, Scott’s work insists on the inseparability of art and radical social transformation. The exhibition draws on the urgency of the present moment, inviting viewers to consider their own positions within the systems his work lays bare.

Dread Scott: The Body Politic is curated by René Morales.

Artists

Dread Scott

Artist

Dread Scott is a visual artist whose works 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. President G.H.W... Read More →

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Sunday October 4, 2026 11:00am - 5:00pm PDT
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

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