Pope.L

PROVENANCE: Courtesy of the Artist

Flint Water (2017-ongoing) began as an art installation, performance and intervention that called attention to the water crisis in Flint by bottling contaminated Flint tap water and selling it as an edition at What Pipeline, Detroit. It attempts to question what it looks like when “one Midwest city helps another struck by similar blight,” while encouraging the art world to take direct action to combat the crisis.

The project brings together Pope.L’s interest in centralizing groups that have historically been exploited and his history of collaboration. Gallons of tap water were bought from a local Flint resident, trucked to Detroit and bottled in the gallery, which also served as an information hub. Proceeds from the sales of the bottled water are donated to non-profit organizations in Flint and Detroit helping to alleviate the crisis. Successive installations of the work have been presented at MCA Chicago and are included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of Art and Detroit Institute of Art.

Pope.L is a visual artist and educator whose multidisciplinary practice uses binaries, contraries and preconceived notions embedded within contemporary culture to create art works in various formats, for example, writing, painting, performance, installation, video and sculpture. Building upon his long history of enacting arduous, provocative, absurdist performances and interventions in public spaces, Pope.L applies some of the same social, formal and performative strategies to his interests in language, system, gender, race and community. The goals for his work are several: joy, money and uncertainty— not necessarily in that order.