On a January night in 1995, eighteen year-old Anthony Rosario lay on the floor of a Bronx apartment with his face mashed to the ground and his back exposed to the gunman hovering over him. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine bullets burned through Rosario’s back and into his body before the shooting stopped. By the time the chaos settled, two gunmen had fired a total of twenty-eight shots, and all of the ones that missed their target were lodged in the apartment’s floor. Not a single bullet had pierced the walls. The two gunmen were never charged for what looked like an execution. The two gunmen were New York police detectives Patrick Brosnan and James Crowe.

Welcome to America is the title of artist Dread Scott’s latest exhibition, a retrospective that, like much of his work, focuses on what’s gone wrong in America: police brutality, institutional racism, xenophobic immigration centers. To Scott, America is engaged in a war against the powerless, who are usually immigrants and racial minorities. “This exhibit shines a light on the brutality, wars, suffering, and murder that is America,” says Scott. “You get a sense that these things are systemic, and the work encourages all viewers to grapple with that.”

The night when Anthony Rosario lost his life is one of the subjects in Scott’s piece Blue Wall of Violence. It places six firing-range silhouettes in front of mechanized police batons that slam down on a wooden board. The targets represent six different people who died at the hands of police. None of the victims had been carrying weapons.

Other works on exhibit include Enduring Freedom, memorials reminiscent of those found after 9/11, but these remember innocent civilians who died from exploding bombs dropped in the U.S.’s War on Terror. In Sign of the Times, a yellow road sign depicts a cop shooting a person who has his hands high above his head, and words warn the public, “Danger: Police in Area.” Though, the most thought provoking piece may be the namesake work Welcome to America, an audio/visual display. While images of officers violently handling detained immigrants filter by on the screen, a child reads xenophobic comments uttered by officers at a detention center following September 11th. “I’m gonna break your face if you move or breathe at all,” the young girl says and follows that with “Welcome to America.”

The exhibit, particularly Blue Wall, has drawn a lot of criticism, especially from police advocates. Patrick Lynch, head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, denounced the exhibit, saying "Police guarantee the right of free expression to everyone, even to people who obviously do not appreciate the risk and sacrifice we make for them." He also questioned whether the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, which is housing the exhibit and is partially funded by the government, should receive any of that money. "Taxpayer dollars certainly should not fund any art that promotes hate, and that's certainly what this does." When pressed, however, a spokesman for the police union admitted that no board members of the association had actually gone to see the exhibit.

The show is not Scott’s first to elicit controversy. In 1989, he exhibited What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag? On the wall was a collection of photographs showing South Korean students burning the American flag and another that displayed flag-draped coffins. Below that was a book asking viewers to respond to the work’s title. Below that was the American flag, unfurled on the ground. To answer Scott’s question in writing, the piece called on visitors to walk across the stars and stripes. The artwork soon entered the dialogue of American politics. President Bush, Sr. condemned the work as “disgraceful,” and both Houses of Congress passed legislation to censure the work and to protect the sanctity of the flag.

“My art is part of forging a radically different world,” says the artist. “I make revolutionary art to propel history forward.” Scott’s work certainly challenges viewers to consider America’s political and social conditions, but sometimes, however, he seems to view the situation with too much simplicity, taking his positions to a nihilistic level. “I want a world without classes and exploitation—a world of freely associating human beings,” an idealistic sentiment from Scott, but then he goes on: “One great obstacle to that whole radically different and far better world is America.”

Of course, America has problems—a lot of them, but to slam the entire nation as a grave threat to humanity is a crude assessment of the world’s sociopolitics. In Imagine the World without America, Scott asks the viewer to do just that. A world without America would probably be a world with North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Iran—countries with governments that adopt human rights violations as the law. Elsewhere, major organizations, including the EU, have recently considered whether to boycott the Olympics in Beijing because of several reasons, especially because of China’s harsh clampdown on Tibetan unrest. The U.S. does need to turn the magnifying glass on itself, but to make a fleeting dismissal of international problems is dangerous.

Too often in Scott’s outlook, the agents behind those problems are too vague, as well. “This is a world where a tiny handful controls the great wealth and knowledge humanity as a whole has created,” he says. A simple platitude, but who exactly should be held accountable? Perhaps Dick Cheney, the millionaire vice president whose former employer Halliburton seems to have monopolized contracts in Iraq? Maybe Al Sharpton, a perennial talking head who profits by tackling social issues—as long as a news camera is there? Or Warren Buffett, the world’s richest man who regularly criticizes the government for taxing the ultra-wealthy too little?

These aren’t the police officers who killed an unarmed man, but they are at the forefront of a society that breeds these situations. Unfortunately, Scott offers no formula or guideline to pinpoint the aggressors or to correct the problems. He selects a few, highlights them in his art, and then denounces the “powerful.” To recognize the crises in our society is important, but following that up by correcting the situation is the essential counterpart. This is exactly what Democratic officials have now begun to realize after years of criticism: if you’re going to gripe about something, you better have a solution.

Although Anthony Rosario wasn’t carrying a gun when the NYPD shot him to death, his friend was. In fact, the only reason police were at the scene that night was because the home had been robbed the previous day, and the burglars had warned that they would return later. With all of the evidence in mind, a grand jury, made up of their Bronx peers, decided not to indict the two detectives who were at the scene. When all of the facts are on display, the situation loses its simplicity.

In Nixon Resigns, Scott stacks newspaper reproductions, all headlined with the former president’s resignation. “It looks at the past,” comments Scott, “but thinking about this can spark peoples’ imagination for what might be possible today.” The artist later posits that “To get rid of the horrors that this exhibit points to and the myriad of other horrors, people need revolution.” But who and what does that entail? Should President Bush be impeached? Should your governor? Should my alderman? How do citizens carry out a revolution against the largest state the world has ever seen? As our government has learned over the past five years, attacking a country is easy. Resolving the conflict is the difficult part.

Welcome to America is on display at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn, NY through June 1st.

-by Jonathan Mason