SFWF | William Pope.L

William Pope.L

William Pope.L, born in 1955, is a prominent, multi-disciplinary artist known for his ironic and martial conceptual art dealing with consumerism, social class and racism. Pope. L regularly draws upon his African-American heritage to tackle variations upon what he calls "social conundrum."

He is trenchantly dubbed "The Friendliest Black Artist in America", which is also the title of a book on his works published in 2002 by MIT Press. Recent activity by Pope. L includes The Black Factory, a wayfaring project initiated in 2004 and displayed at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MOCA) as part of The Interventionists show. In another performance piece called The Great White Way, Pope. L crawled his way from the Battery north through Manhattan dressed in a Superman outfit.

Housed in a cargo van and inflatable igloo, Pope.L's The Black Factory, is a set of energetic activities that investigate community, race, identity and connection through performance, interactive work and exhibitions. In his project called 141 Demands for a Better World, participants are encouraged to step up to the microphone and state their demands to create a better world. Pope. L currently works as a lecturer of Theater and Rhetoric at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.