Artnet Talks: A Conversation With Shaun Leonardo, Dread Scott, and Clifford Owens on Art as an Act of Resistance

From left: Clifford Owens (photo by
Karina Aguilera Skvirsky), Shaun Leonardo (photo by Lelanie
Foster), Dread Scott (photo by Sebastian Kim).

Clifford Owens is a transdisciplinary artist. He
makes photographs, performance art, works on paper, videos,
installations, and texts. His art has appeared in many solo and
group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. Owens’s
solo museum exhibitions include “Anthology” at MoMA PS1, “Better
the Rebel You Know at Home” in Manchester, England, and
“Perspectives 173: Clifford Owens” at the Contemporary Arts Museum
Houston; and group exhibitions of his work include “Freestyle,”
“Greater New York 2005,” and “Performance Now: The First Decade of
the New Century.” His performance-based projects have been widely
presented in museums and galleries, including the Museum of Modern
Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Academy of
Music.

Shaun Leonardo is a Brooklyn-based
artist from Queens, New York City. He received his MFA from the San
Francisco Art Institute, is a recipient of support from Creative
Capital, Guggenheim Social Practice, Art for Justice, and A Blade
of Grass, and was recently profiled in the New York Times.
His work has been featured at the Guggenheim Museum, the High Line,
and New Museum, with a recent solo exhibition at the Maryland
Institute College of Art (MICA). From fall 2018 through spring
2020, Leonardo enacted socially engaged projects at Pratt
Institute’s School of Art as a visiting fellow.

Dread Scott is an
interdisciplinary artist whose art encourages viewers to re-examine
ideals of American society. In 1989, the US Senate outlawed his
artwork and President Bush declared it “disgraceful” because of its
transgressive use of the American flag. His work has been exhibited
at the Whitney Museum, MoMA PS1, the Walker Art Center, and in
galleries and on street corners. He is a 2019 Open Society
Foundations Soros Equality Fellow and has received grants from
United States Artists and the Creative Capital Foundation. Artnet
News highlighted his 2019 performance, Slave Rebellion
Reenactment, as one of the most important artworks
of the decade.

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