In 1989, 24-year-old artist Dread Scott’s “What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag” invited guests to walk across Old Glory to write their answer to that question in a ledger. The provocative piece drew the ire of the sitting president George H.W. Bush. When Scott and other protestors later burned a flag at the U.S. Capital, their arrest eventually led to a Supreme Court ruling that flag-burning is protected speech under the Constitution.
Scott provides a deliberate callback to that work with “Defending the Flag” (2026), in which the stars and strips are hung on a proper pole, but anyone who steps near it is prevented from doing so by a retired military service member brandishing a prop rifle.
The latter work isn’t the chief focus of “Dread Scott: The Body Politic,” currently running at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, but it does provide an important context. Armed troops are willing – if not required – to die and kill for the flag, sacrificing their bodies and those of others. Yet, they rarely show the same reverence for the citizens whom the flag supposedly represents.
The majority of “The Body Politic” does indeed consist of images that reproduce likenesses of the human body. Upon entering the ground-level gallery where the show is installed, the first thing one notices is the wall-sized canvas piece “Life/Death/America” (2026). The powdered graphite-on-canvas piece used nearly 20 models, who rested their bodies on special paper before it dried. A diverse range of ages, genders, and body types can be made out in the finished images. The ghostly impression of bodies vaguely resembles crime scene chalk outlines after a mass-casualty event. Scott said during the show’s press preview, the piece is deliberately evocative of Pompeii.
“I wanted to focus on the strength and diversity of the body politick,” he said. He elaborated that the recent years’ onslaught of deaths – including from Covid, Israeli murders in Gaza, and even “active shooter” events in the United States. – led him to emphasize how each of those bodies belongs to a living person no longer breathing. “People are being disappeared!”
Similar to the wall-sized piece are three smaller 2023 works hanging on another wall. “Hands Up” employs a similar ink-on-canvas technique for a piece reminiscent of the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” protests movement from an earlier decade. “Mug Shot,” is a diptych, resembles classic police arrest photos, with one panel including a nameplate.
“Fight the Power” changes the raised palms of “Hands Up” into closed fists, drawing a direct line from those victimized to those radicalized. What’s more, it’s impossible to ignore that all of the above images resemble Black subjects against white backdrops. Scott was never one for subtlety.
With that in mind, it’s interesting to see the additional works for which hindsight has given renewed relevance. On the wall opposite from “Hands Up,” and others are three silkscreen-on-pigment print pieces from 2022. All three are part of Scott’s “Obliterated Power” series, with each piece named after the government building depicted in the original photograph: “Pentagon,” “Supreme Court,” and “Capital.”
Each piece features and aerial photo of its respective building, with the named subject scribbled out in black marker, as if by a teenager crossing someone they dislike out of a photo. The pieces were first presented in 2022 long before DOGE eviscerated government agencies. The final piece of “The Body Politic” is a sort of self-portrait of Scott himself. “The Fire Next Time” employs the same body-print-on-canvas technique as the other pieces, with Scott’s trademark dreadlocks instantly recognizable on a bare human skull. The body shape is imposed over a lightly-visible image of the U.S. flag as it burns.
The body is clearly more visible, yet it’s debatable whether it or the flag would be considered more valuable. After 37 years, Scott’s work is no less incendiary than it was when he was an upstart. His approach is simple, but the reactions they provoke remain palpable.
Just don’t get too close to the flag. The guy with the rifle won’t like it.
“Dread Scott: The Body Politic” runs through January 31, 2027 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St.
