Sheldon Scott (b. 1976), still from Portrait, number 1 man (day clean ta sun down), 2018 (premiere 2019). Performance with rice and HD video, approx. 13 hrs. Collection of the artist, courtesy of CONNERSMITH. © Sheldon Scott.
"Portrait, number 1 man (day clean ta sun down)" by Sheldon Scott
The Outwin artist Sheldon Scott performs Portrait, number 1 man (day clean ta sun down) in the Museum’s Saligman Family Atrium. The artist will hull and winnow grains of rice from sunrise to sunset for two days, recalling the labor of and cruel conditions experienced by enslaved people in coastal regions of the pre–Civil War South.
Related program
Join Sheldon Scott in conversation with Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw online on Saturday, November 20. Learn more.
About the artist
Born and raised in Pawley’s Island in the Gullah/Geechee Lowcountry of South Carolina, Sheldon Scott now lives and works in Washington, DC. His fine art practices play in the intersection of race, sexuality, and economics, while impugning mythologies of Black male supernaturality. His works includes performance, sculpture, installation, photography, spoken word, creative nonfiction, objects, video, and ephemera. Scott has exhibited at Delaware State University, Art Miami, Untitled Art Fair, Katzen Art Museum, David C. Driskell Center, and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and his work has been acquired by esteemed collections including the National Museum of African-American History and Culture and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. He has been recognized by Americans for the Arts’s Best Public Art Program and as a finalist for the National Portrait Gallery’s 2019 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Scott has been a featured presenter at TEDx Mid-Atlantic, ArtTable, CreativeTime Festival, Washington Ideas Festival, and the Smithsonian Long Conversation. He currently serves on the boards of Teaching for Change, Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, Transformer, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre, and serves at the Global Head of Purpose at Eaton Workshop. Scott is represented by ConnerSmith Gallery and Ross and Yoon Literary Agency.