Since the late seventies, the avant-garde American artist Pope.L has performed over forty crawls, manoeuvring his body horizontally through public spaces—wearing carefully selected outfits and often holding props—to challenge notions of belonging in society and to probe the relation of race to capitalism. This 1991 crawl took place next to Tompkins Square Park in New York on a sweltering July day. The artist wore a suit and carried a delicate potted flower, which he endeavoured to keep intact throughout the crawl. The photographs documenting the event are at once provocative and poetic, appearing almost like film stills.
