Pope.L

Pope.L (1955-2023) was an artist and educator. Known for enacting arduous, provocative, absurdist performances, and interventions in public spaces, such as Times Square Crawl (1978), Eating the Wall Street Journal (2000), and The Great White Way (2001–2009), Pope.L applied some of the same social, formal and performative strategies to his interests in language, system, gender, race and community. Pope.L began his career in the 1970s, creating works that find their foothold in personal travail, reading philosophy, and performance and theatre training with Geoff Hendricks and Mabous Mines. He studied at Pratt Institute and received his BA from Montclair State College in 1978. He attended the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art before earning his MFA from Rutgers University in 1981. He taught at the University of Chicago.