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The Bad Air Smelled of Roses
Carl Pope Jr. 

Video

2021
Length: 48:33 min.
Language: English

Carl Pope Jr. describes The Bad Air Smelled of Roses (2004 — ongoing) as a continuous writing exercise, a graphic essay that maps the ubiquitous presence and function of blackness in society and nature.” The work, begun in 2004, currently consists of 108 letterpress posters, each with a text selected by the artist as an answer to the question What do I think of when I think of being black?” The answers come from many sources, some of which are predictable (black literature, jazz and rap, Malcolm X), others less so (Descartes, Freud, Casablanca, a television advertisement for bubble baths from the 1970s).

Although the project draws heavily on African American culture and civil rights activism traditions, the black that Pope cited is not just a hue associated with Africa, its people and the African diaspora, but also a narrative thread shared by those that are outside the natural order’ of things.” It is an alternative way of understanding the world, an epistemological space of otherness that encompasses that which is generally unseen, unknown, forgotten, suppressed or rejected. Unframed and pinned to the exhibition space wall in large numbers, the posters oscillate between visual art and public proclamations as they can often be seen during protests. Similar to concrete poetry, the visual language corresponds to the phonetics and the content of the language.


Carl Pope Jr. (*1961 Indianapolis, lives in Indianapolis) focuses on the social conditions of African-American society in America in his preferred media of photography and video. He held lectures at the University of North Carolina, the State University of New York, and the University of Illinois, among others. His work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama; City Site Projects/​Atlanta Arts Festival, Atlanta; Raw Space, ARC Gallery, Chicago; Cunningham Gallery, Indianapolis, among others. They have been included in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, New York City; MoMA, New York City; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas; CA2M, Madrid; Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis; Richmond Art Museum, Richmond; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, among others.