William Pope.L

For ATM Piece, performed in 1997, he attached himself with an eight-foot length of Italian sausage to the door of a Chase Bank in midtown Manhattan wearing nothing but timberland boots and a skirt made out of U.S. dollar bills.

[6] eRacism, a project that Pope.L began during the late 1970s, included over 40 endurance-based performances consisting of “crawls”, varying in length and duration.

In 2001 the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) advisory renewal panel granted Pope.L $42,000 in financing for a traveling retrospective called "William Pope.L: eRacism".

[1] Joel Wachs, then president of the Andy Warhol Foundation, stated in the December 21 issue of The New York Times: "It is important, particularly in light of what I would consider an attack on freedom of expression, to stand firm.

The catalog "William Pope.L: Friendliest Black Artist in America" was produced by curator Mark Bessire in conjunction with the retrospective exhibition.

The Factory’s workers use these objects in tightly rehearsed but loosely performed skits to stimulate a conversation — a flow of ideas, images and experiences.

[12] Pope.L was featured alongside other performing artists: Sean Penn, Willem Dafoe, Brad Pitt, Steve Buscemi, and Juliette Binoche in Robert Wilson's LAB HD portraits.

[13] The Mitchell-Inness and Nash Gallery in Chelsea showcased William Pope.L's solo exhibition, Landscape + Object + Animal, featuring works spanning from the 1990s to present.

Through his diverse range of practices, including painting, collage, performance, video, and text excerpts, Pope.L offers a critical reflection on the societal norms that govern our lives.

This review highlights the allegorical nature of his work, where everyday objects, stripped of their original meanings, are reimagined as politically charged symbols.

By embodying multiple personas, from man to animal to Superman, Pope.L challenges the boundaries and labels that divide our world and reconstructs the landscape we occupy.

To infuse humor into his work, Pope.L collaborated with other visiting artists to select objects from two fluxkits on display and determine their placement.

The centerpiece of the show was Trinket, a monumental, custom-made U.S. flag (approximately 54 x 16 feet) hanging on a pole in the middle of the Geffen.

During the museum's public hours the flag was continuously blown by four large-scale industrial fans — the type used on Hollywood film sets to create wind or rain effects — and which were illuminated from below by a bank of custom theatrical lights.

Over time the flag appeared to fray at its ends due to the constant whipping of the forced air as a metaphor for the rigors and complexities of democratic engagement and participation.

[18][19][20][21] Trinket was originally produced in 2008 at Grand Arts, in Kansas City, Missouri, as the centerpiece of Pope.L's exhibition Animal Nationalism.

The rumbling of their wheels grows louder through speakers as they approach the crowd, and blends with the low churning of electric guitars.

[24][25] From 2017 to 2018, Pope.l created a work entitled "Rebus" that incorporated a diverse array of materials such as acrylic, ballpoint, chalk, felt, graphite, grommets, ink, markers, painter's tape, paper, Post-its, oil stick and towels on linen, measuring 235 × 305 cm.

[28][29] The first exhibition, "Conquest" was a communal performance piece with 140 participants who crawled on sidewalks for 1.5 mile relay style, over the course of five hours.

He is quoted as saying of his own work: “I am a fisherman of social absurdity, if you will… My focus is to politicize disenfranchisement, to make it neut, to reinvent what’s beneath us, to remind us where we all come from.