Jun 26, 2026, 6:30 PM – 8 PM

In Conversation: Laura Hoptman with Hamza Walker on the Subject of Pope.L's Drawings

Join Drawing Center's Executive Director Laura Hoptman and curator Hamza Walker, Director of The Brick in Los Angeles for a special conversation on drawing as the central, expansive and generative core aspect of visionary artist, teacher, and performer Pope.L's work, on occasion of the exhibition Certainly an Act: Works on Paper by Pope.L.

Pope.L

Pope.L (1955–2023) was a groundbreaking interdisciplinary artist whose provocative, conceptually driven work spanned performance, installation, painting, sculpture, and drawing. Born in Newark, NJ, Pope.L trained as a playwright before earning his MFA at Rutgers University. This background brought a narrative and theatrical sensibility to a practice rooted in absurdity, endurance, and confrontation. Best known for his grueling crawl performances—such as The Great White Way (2001–2009)—and his biting text-based works, including the long-running Skin Set series, Pope.L exposed the contradictions of race, language, and class in American life. As a professor at Bates College and later at the University of Chicago, he mentored generations of artists who were inspired by his interventionist critique and an engagement with public spaces. His legacy is one of radical inquiry—an unrelenting interrogation of language, power, failure, identity, and the absurdity of contemporary society.
Hamza Walker

Hamza Walker is the Director of the Los Angeles alternative art space The Brick. From 1994 to 2015, he was Director of Education and Associate Curator at The Renaissance Society in Chicago. Walker has curated numerous groundbreaking exhibitions, including MONUMENTS (2025–26) and Sperm Cult (2018) at The Brick; Made in L.A. 2016 at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Black Is, Black Ain’t (2008) at The Renaissance Society. His writings have appeared in Artforum, Trans, and Parkett, as well as in artist monographs on Dana Schutz, Mark Bradford, Tony Tasset, and Ben Gest, among others.

Lead support for Certainly an Act: Works on Paper by Pope.L is provided by Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis. Generous funding is provided by Jill and Peter Kraus, Sarah Arison, and Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg. Additional support is provided by Gladstone; Hilary and Peter Hatch, Bernard Lumpkin and Carmine Boccuzzi, Modern Art, London, Adam Pendleton and Karsten Ch'ien, Vielmetter, Los Angeles, Timur Galen and Linda Genereux, the Hudgins Family, and Ann and Mel Schaffer.

Special thanks to the Estate of Pope.L and Mitchell-Innes & Nash.