For more than 20 years, Brooklyn Artist Dread Scott has been calling out police brutality and racial profiling. He created this banner "A Man was Lynched by Police Yesterday" in 2015 when a white police officer in South Carolina fatally shot a black man, Walter Scott, in the back. The banner is showing up in many places now.
What You Need To Know:
- Brooklyn Artist Dread Scott has been creating work to protest police brutality and racial injustice for decades.
- One piece that might seem new but isn’t is a banner that reads "A Man Was Lynched By Police Yesterday.”
- A new online platform is elevating artists who are creating works in response to the pandemic and protests.
- Artist Kambui Olujii was inspired to paint after seeing the Minneapolis Police Precinct on fire.
"It's been a time when there's been tremendous interest both in my work and what I have to say including internationally, but also I've been very interested in these times. When I saw the video of the murder of George Floyd, it ripped my heart out. But then when people started rebelling and resisting in all kinds of beautiful ways, it's been very exhilarating," he told us.
A work from 1999 shows items that have been mistaken for guns in the hands of unarmed black men who were shot by police. Scott says it's frustrating; that the fight against racism must continue. He's optmistic.
"It is a time when I think a lot of people are saying that the time for change is now," he told us.
He and other artists have seen their voices elevated by renewed interest in activist art. One showcase is a new online platform “Art At A Time Like This,” organized by local curators Barbara Pollack and Anne Verhallen, which showcases the importance of art during times of turmoil.
"Political artists and other kinds of artists inspire people, bring us together, but more importantly artists are citizens and have really an astute understanding of what's going on in their society," Pollack said.
"And so, looking at artists, creatives, poets, and writers to really visualize the future is really important so for us," added Verhalen.
Among the voices presented is Queens artist Kambui Olujimi. "George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, these murders sparked something that ignited across the globe. When I saw the precinct burning in Minneapolis, cynically enough, I thought this could easily be forgotten, and just home in my living room in the middle of the night, I decided to start working on those paintings," he said, on his inspiration for two new works.
He says this work ensures this moment in time cannot be erased. "It's like fossilizing it," he told us.
These works are a searing portrait of a moment in history that's still unfolding.
The art world is showing renewed interest in artists and photographers who seem to have captured the moment. For political artists, it’s meant perhaps that they’ve made work that will be part of history, that also brings its own frustrations.
All artists want to be apart of history and for some who make political art, it’s a time of both renewed interest in their work and frustration.