William Pope.L

 Eating the Wall Street Journal (3rd version) , 2000, Mixed media installation with performance, SculptureCenter New York

Eating the Wall Street Journal (3rd version), 2000, Mixed media installation with performance, SculptureCenter New York

Whether calling himself “The Friendliest Black Artist in America”, eating the Wall Street Journal piece by piece, or crawling up the entirety of New York’s Broadway, the American artist William Pope.L applies pressure in exactly those places where race and capitalism meet in the American unconscious. Adrienne Edwards writes on Pope.L‘s strategies of abjection, precarity, and play.

 BMW Tate Live 2015 – "If Tate Modern was Musée de la danse?" Olivia Hemingway ©Tate Photography

BMW Tate Live 2015 – "If Tate Modern was Musée de la danse?" Olivia Hemingway ©Tate Photography

Last weekend, dancer and choreographer Boris Charmatz hypothetically transformed Tate Modern into Musée de la danse. Our editor-at-large was harbouring some reservations about this new democratic participatory art, but found it surprisingly moving.