Skip to main contentThis week, PICA unveils eRacism, the traveling exhibit/retrospective of William Pope.L, who bills himself as "the friendliest black artist in America." Working with mixed media, Pope.L has created a tremendous body of work that has appealed to liberal intellectuals and enraged conservatives. But he is perhaps best known for controversial performance-art pieces such as Eating the Wall Street Journal, in which Pope.L, naked and covered in talcum powder, sat on a toilet elevated 10 feet off the ground while eating a copy of The Wall Street Journal. Pope.L is equally well-known for his performance "crawls" that find him crawling through the streets.
There's one scheduled performance for eRacism, "Candy Mountain," as well as several of his text pieces and collages. But the the focus of Pope.L's latest artistic expression is on installations.
First and foremost, there's Map of the World, a reversed map of the United States made up of 5,000 hot dogs mounted on a wall and held in place by rubber cement and more than 20,000 screws. Then, towering over 10 feet high, is The Beginning of the World, a mixed-media piece depicting a grotesque, alienlike figure, rendered primarily in peanut butter. Both pieces address issues ranging from this nation's consumption of junk food to the lack of substantial nourishment available to the poor.
Slightly less cryptic than the other pieces is Party Room, a structure that houses liquor bottles filled with stuffed animals. As in most of Pope.L's work, there are several possible interpretations, but given his reputation, the best involve inner-city despair.
In some circles, Pope.L is considered a genius, a designation often afforded to artists whose cryptic work leaves plenty of room for eager gallery and museum patrons looking to find meaning by filling in the blanks with their own issues and neuroses. But in terms of African-American artists making bold statements--both intentional and unintentional, cryptic and obvious--Pope.L is hopelessly out of touch. He appeals to people (mostly white) who live in a vacuum of wine-and-cheese privilege.
The Dada-esque antics of Pope.L can certainly be seen as a statement about the toll drugs and alcohol have taken on the black community. But can this spectacle, which has all the makings of a bad Saturday Night Live sketch, ever get to the heart of the horror that people are dying in the streets? How many bodies will you step over on the way to the gallery?
To call Pope.L's work bold, daring or confrontational is to exalt him to such company as the Last Poets and Muhammad Ali, Richard Pryor and Amiri Baraka, N.W.A. and Billie Holiday--and he doesn't deserve it. While all of these others spoke directly of the black experience and racism, Pope.L seems to be pandering to white intellectualism.
Ultimately, a black man covering himself in talcum powder only makes a socially relevant commentary until you look at what Michael Jackson has done to himself. By comparison with the real-life spectacle of Jackson's bleached and mutilated visage, which speaks volumes about racial identity, Pope.L comes across like a second-rate carny.
PICA, 219 NW 12th Ave., 242-1419. May 7- July 26.
There will be a gallery talk on Wednesday, May 7, at 7 pm.
Pope.L will perform "Candy Mountain" at Southwest 3rd Avenue and Taylor Street at 6 pm Friday-Saturday, June 6-7.
WWeek 2015