Rewriting the body: Carl and Karen Pope's "Palimpsest"
Date
2005
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
In 1998 American artist Carl Pope was commissioned by the Wadsworth Atheneum to created Palimpsest a body art/video piece in collaboration with his twin sister, poet Karen Pope. Palimpsest was completed in 1999 and later exhibited in the 2000 Whitney Biennial. In this piece Pope conceives of his body as a palimpsest upon which a story has been written which is made up of projected stereotypes of who he is as an African-American. Through the enactment of three deliberate and permanent modifications to his body---the branding of the adinkra symbol Aya (I am not afraid of you), a small surgical incision and the tattooing of poetic text across the full length of the back of his body---Pope seeks to literally and symbolically rewrite this story and assert agency in the construction of his identity. This thesis discusses how Pope uses his body to evoke the specificity of his experience as an African-American, while at the same time using the body as a common denominator which, particularly through the experience of pain, links people across race. The work functions as a process of personal catharsis and self-actualization for the artist as well as an empathetic experience for the viewer and reinforces the idea of the body as a receptor and carrier of knowledge. This thesis also discusses the implications of the choice of body art/video as the medium for Palimpsest and situates the piece within the context of 1990's body art theory and practice and discourses of the 'black body'.