Pope.L (born William Pope and also known as William Pope.L) was an American visual artist and educator best known for site-specific performances and public interventions that confront social and racial inequalities shaping American society.
Read MorePope.L began his career in the 1970s, creating works that find their foothold in his working-class background, philosophy, and performance and theatre training with Fluxus-affiliated artist Geoffrey Hendricks and experimental theatre company Mabou Mines.
He studied at Pratt Institute, New York, and later received his BA from Montclair State College, New Jersey, in 1978. He also attended the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art before earning his MFA from Rutgers University in 1981.
Building on an interest in language, system, gender, race, and community, Pope.L employs binaries, contraries, and preconceived notions embedded in contemporary culture to create a range of artworks that span writing, performance, painting, installation, video, and sculpture. The goals are several: joy, money, and uncertainty—not necessarily in that order.
Among the artist's best-known work, the nine-year project The Great White Way, 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street (2001–2009) saw Pope.L crawl the 22-mile stretch of Broadway, New York City, over nine years in response to systemic indifference to poverty.
'As a Black man in America, Pope.L said he could never experience race as simply personal—a reality that differed from the experience of white people he knew,' Stephanie Bailey writes in 2024.
For the 2019 public commission Conquest, the artist enlisted 140 volunteers to crawl from New York's West Village to Union Square blindfolded. 'Just because a person is lying on the sidewalk doesn't mean they've given up their humanity,' the artist explained in 2002.
Pope.L's performances have been staged at major institutions and venues worldwide, including Anthology Film Archives; Franklin Furnace; Just Above Midtown; MoMA; New Museum; Performa; The Sculpture Center; 2002 Whitney Biennial; MOCA Los Angeles; Shinjuku Station in Tokyo; and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
Major performances include Baile; The Problem (both 2016); Pull (2013); The Black Factory national tour (2002–2009); The Great White Way (2001–2002); Community Crawls (2000–2005); Eating the Wall Street Journal (2000); Black Domestic aka Roach Motel Black (1994); How Much is that Nigger in the Window (1990–1992); Times Square Crawl (1978); and Thunderbird Immolation (1978).
Recent exhibitions include South London Gallery (2023); Instigation, Aspiration, Perspiration in New York organised by MoMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Public Art Fund (2019); Flint Water Project at What Pipeline, Detroit (2017); Whispering Campaign at documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); Claim at the 2017 Whitney Biennial (2017); and Baile at the 32nd Biennal de São Paulo (2016).
Pope.L is represented by Mitchell-Innes & Nash (New York) and Modern Art (London).
Elaine YJ Zheng | Ocula | 2024
