Video (color, sound; 4:19 min), five inkjet prints
Not on view
The video documenting this performance opens with the following questions: “What do black people want?” “Who do they want it from?” “Why do they want it?” For Sweet Desire, which took place at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine on a hot August day, Pope.L had himself buried in the ground up to his chest for eight hours. Wearing a white collared shirt, red hat, and tie, the artist gazed on as a bowl of vanilla ice cream placed in front him slowly melted in the sun.
Having previously crawled on the ground, for this action Pope.L goes below grade, taking the acts of submission so central to his Crawl works a step further by rendering himself completely immobile. Pushing his body to its limits through an extreme test of endurance (he had to be unearthed and hospitalized midway through a subsequent performance), Pope.L underscores the polarity of desire and what he calls “have-not-ness,” a contradictory condition he considers to be definitive of the experience of oppressed peoples.
October 21, 2019–February 1, 2020
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Pope.L
American, 1955–2023 33 works onlineFor five days, Pope.L sat on a toilet situated atop a tall makeshift tower, reading and eating a copy of the Wall Street Journal soaked in milk and ketchup.
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