Cheryl Pope by Carolina Wheat
Textiles, boxing, and strip clubs.
October 23, 2024
Cheryl Pope, Tongue Tied, 2024, needle-punched wool roving on cashmere, 32 × 23 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery.
Cheryl Pope stands up after blows in the boxing ring and in her life. As a die-hard artist, connector, educator, and an inspirator to Chicago youth, she understands what it’s like to have been shaken. Whether it’s romance-, race-, gender-, or class-based, her multimedia work stabs at power, while keenly recognizing its historically referenced politics. In her current work, Pope recreates deeply personal scenarios with needle-punched wool roving on cashmere, cinematically composing the silent complexities of beauty with tragedy. Winding lines and vibrating colored patterns in her figurative tapestries oscillate between imagery of love and loss. Her current solo show, No Place Better Than the Body, presents a titillating array of static strip-club imagery—from memory. She recalls voyeurism and a female gaze of her own. Yet, the depth of intimacy is as fleeting as a fragrance. The eroticism need not delve inside; the surface is too hot.
Carolina WheatYour stripper series is so sexy and also feels a little naughty, like Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist kind of naughty. What brought you to begin depicting these sex-positive scenes?
Cheryl Pope Miami inspired this series, as it’s been so sex-positive for me. It’s the first time in my life I feel safe and publicly open in my own body while exploring sensual sexuality. I think that’s in part due to the environment: colorful vegetation, beach life, and art deco’s soft pastels. But perhaps it’s because the international community embraces all body types and styles of self-expression. I love how present, visible, and adored the body is here. This series of textile works is an opportunity for me to celebrate this newfound freedom with the body.
CW Since your recent work recreates scenes from memory, does that mean you’ve been touring strip clubs? What brought you there?
CP Funny enough, I was literally first brought there by friends. When I opened my Miami studio in 2022 and started going out, I realized quickly that strip clubs were a regular stop. My girlfriends have friends that are strippers, and so we would go to support them. It wasn’t a shameful act, as it seems to be in Chicago, where I am from; it’s much more culturally integrated without any negative connotations.
I love the unreliability of memory; to me, this feels accurate to my experience of reality. By drawing these works from memory, there is a looseness of what is loved in a moment—and what is lost. This allows me to build an image from a few memories. The dimensions are then determined by the feeling within the observation rather than connected to our devices or a photo.
Cheryl Pope, For You Too, 2024, needle-punched wool roving on cashmere, 70 × 57 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery.
CW You’ve also successfully engaged with sculpture, video, and text/poetry-based installations through multiple exhibitions. Yet, this fresh and slow process of making imagery has been compelling to see flourish while it references French post-impressionists, intimists, and imagists. What brought you to this new style of visual language? Do you still make sculptures?
CP This process and style was birthed through my experience of grief due to a few major losses. I turned deep within myself to grieve privately in my studio. I reemerged from the depths of surrendering to mystery with this new language. Since then, the work continues to evolve. I am following the mystery, which has released limitations and allows for an endless reveal. This keeps me curious.
I love that you ask this because this work has a sculptural process. Each line is a weight, a value, a thickness that I comb through and then lay out before physically punching it multiple times into the cloth background. I then go in with a single needle to carve around the edges and create cleaner lines. The work is physically built as sculpture. In the end, it falls to a flat, painterly surface; I love that alchemy.
This specific series of female figures is also heightened sculpturally because as I lay down the contour of their bodies, I am tracing the sensual 3-D feeling while I remember seeing. It’s like the hand runs down the skin of a body, as one would a figurative sculpture. This mental connection between the physical and the flat is sculptural to me.
CW What artists are you looking at or reading that have informed this work?
CP Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester, among others. Bacon constantly talks about the nervous system in regard to experiencing art. We have gotten so caught up in the “message” that we forget that the visual experience is foremost felt through the nervous system, through our body. My strippers hold patterns, colors, and shapes that I translate to invigorate viewers’ connections to their own nervous systems. Also, John Singer Sargent captures psychology so well. In his portraits, the posture, the gaze, and most importantly the hands tell it all.
Cheryl Pope, Money Bag, 2024, needle-punched wool roving on cashmere, 22.5 × 25.5 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery.
CW Please reflect on beauty, as there is a strong female archetype throughout the canon of painting that references the discovery of the handheld mirror and how it gave power to women to control their visage. How, if any, is this similar to the cell phone’s camera now? Do you see a correlation between things like OnlyFans and a physical building where one can adorn women’s bodies?
CP Jennifer Higgie’s The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution, and Resilience: Five Hundred Years of Women’s Self Portraits specifically looks at the hand mirror and how women artists have painted themselves looking in the mirror, referencing the power of reflection and self-defining beauty. I see that connection with cell phones today while seeing women in public taking selfies and admiring their beauty with unabashed confidence.
It’s tricky. The cell phone camera, just as the hand mirror did, is this amazing device that allows women to explore their own beauty and body with all the angles. All the while, the content of OnlyFans images are inspired by strippers, who work in one of the oldest, longest-standing industries that exist. In contrast, I think strip clubs are very special places because of the physicality, the real encounters of bodies, sexuality, connection, and intimacy. To me, they are a kind of temple that celebrates this core aspect of what it means to be alive.
CWI appreciate you referencing a holy place or referring to the strip club as a temple. The concept of an offering—tips—comes into play. I specifically adore the work Money Bag (2024), as its point of view is as if the lap of a woman has singles ready to adorn a strappy panty. The patterns are delightful. Is this work referencing your POV? Do you experience different “rules” for women at strip clubs than there are for hetero-men?
CP Thanks, I like Money Bags too, as it holds two perspectives, one from above and one from the side, signaling both the individual and the other. I try to do this with several of the works, for example an open bar stool or the cut-outs, suggesting that relation between two. That handbag full of singles could be mine or could belong to one of the strippers, as it’s common practice to carry a bag when moving around to collect the tips. As for rules, I think there is a base code of conduct, and then each person bends, flexes, finds their own—with permission.
I also have employed a cut-out in a few works, which breaks the rectangle by removing a corner. I had seen this in the work of Leon Golub and was always curious to better understand why he did it. So I tried it. Sometimes, I cut out where I was sitting, so that now the viewer can be where I was.
Cheryl Pope, She likes you, She likes me, She likes me, She likes you, 2024, needle-punched wool roving on cashmere, 40.5 × 43 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery.
CWI’m especially drawn to the composition, patterns, and colors in She likes you, She likes me, She likes me, She likes you (2024). Can you please elaborate on the title of that particular work?
CPAs we have all become aware through social media, attention is our real currency. Strip clubs possess the visible transaction of our attention: my dollar for my gaze. I appreciate that women at strip clubs are getting cash currency in exchange for anonymous attention. The title clearly announces that it’s not personal; it’s transactional. She likes me with my dollar; she likes you with your dollar; and what’s being exchanged is affirming attention.
Cheryl Pope: No Place Better Than the Body is on view at Easy Does It Curatorial Space in Los Angeles (in collaboration with Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago) until November 9; Pope’s work can also be seen in the group exhibitions Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco until February 18, 2025; and Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, until March 9, 2025.
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Cheryl Pope, Lengua Atada, 2024, lana perforada sobre cachemira, 81 × 58 cm.
Cortesía de la artista y la Galería Monique Meloche.
Cheryl Pope se levanta tras los golpes recibidos en el ring y en su vida. Como artista ferviente, conectora, educadora e inspiradora de la juventud de Chicago, comprende lo que es ser sacudido. Ya sea por cuestiones de romance, raza, género o clase, su obra multimedia ataca el poder, al tiempo que reconoce profundamente su política históricamente referenciada. En su obra actual, Pope recrea escenarios profundamente personales con lana perforada sobre cachemira, combinando cinematográficamente las complejidades silenciosas de la belleza con la tragedia. Líneas sinuosas y vibrantes patrones de colores en sus tapices figurativos oscilan entre imágenes de amor y pérdida. Su actual espectáculo en solitario, No Place Better Than the Body, presenta una excitante variedad de imágenes estáticas de clubes de striptease, de memoria. Recuerda el voyeurismo y una mirada femenina propia. Sin embargo, la profundidad de la intimidad es tan fugaz como una fragancia. El erotismo no necesita ahondar en el interior; la superficie es demasiado intensa.
Carolina Wheat
Tu serie de strippers es muy sexy y también un poco atrevida, como la atrevida Bad Feminist de Roxane Gay. ¿Qué te llevó a empezar a representar estas escenas con positividad sexual?
Cheryl Pope
Miami inspiró esta serie, ya que ha sido muy positiva para mí. Es la primera vez en mi vida que me siento segura y abierta públicamente en mi propio cuerpo mientras exploro la sexualidad sensual. Creo que se debe en parte al entorno: vegetación colorida, vida playera y los suaves tonos pastel del art déco. Pero quizás se deba a que la comunidad internacional acepta todos los tipos de cuerpo y estilos de autoexpresión. Me encanta lo presente, visible y venerado que está el cuerpo aquí. Esta serie de obras textiles me brinda la oportunidad de celebrar esta nueva libertad con el cuerpo.
CW
Dado que tu obra reciente recrea escenas de la memoria, ¿significa eso que has estado de gira por clubes de striptease? ¿Qué te trajo allí?
CP
Curiosamente, mis amigos fueron quienes me llevaron allí. Cuando abrí mi estudio en Miami en 2022 y empecé a salir, me di cuenta rápidamente de que los clubes de striptease eran una parada habitual. Mis amigas tienen amigas que son strippers, así que íbamos a apoyarlas. No era un acto vergonzoso, como parece serlo en Chicago, de donde soy; está mucho más integrado culturalmente, sin connotaciones negativas.
Me encanta la imprecisión de la memoria; para mí, esto se siente fiel a mi experiencia de la realidad. Al dibujar estas obras de memoria, hay una cierta ligereza entre lo que se ama en un momento y lo que se pierde. Esto me permite construir una imagen a partir de algunos recuerdos. Las dimensiones se determinan entonces por la sensación que transmite la observación, en lugar de estar conectadas con nuestros dispositivos o una foto.
1600 Una obra de costura que presenta a dos mujeres ligeras de ropa trabajando en el escenario de un club de striptease.
Cheryl Pope, For You Too (Para ti también), 2024, hilado de lana punzonado sobre cachemira, 187 × 145 cm. Cortesía de la artista y la Galería Monique Meloche.
CW
También has trabajado con éxito con esculturas, vídeos e instalaciones basadas en texto y poesía en múltiples exposiciones. Sin embargo, ha sido fascinante ver florecer este proceso fresco y pausado de creación de imágenes, que a la vez hace referencia a postimpresionistas, intimistas e imaginistas franceses. ¿Qué te llevó a este nuevo estilo de lenguaje visual? ¿Sigues haciendo esculturas?
CP
Este proceso y estilo nacieron de mi experiencia de duelo por algunas pérdidas importantes. Me refugié en mi interior para llorar en privado en mi estudio. Resurgió de las profundidades de mi entrega al misterio con este nuevo lenguaje. Desde entonces, la obra sigue evolucionando. Sigo el misterio, que ha liberado limitaciones y permite una revelación infinita. Esto me mantiene curiosa.
Me encanta que me preguntes esto porque esta obra tiene un proceso escultórico. Cada línea tiene un peso, un valor, un grosor que peino y luego extiendo antes de perforarla físicamente varias veces sobre el fondo de tela. Después, con una sola aguja, tallo los bordes y creo líneas más limpias. La obra se construye físicamente como una escultura. Al final, cae sobre una superficie plana y pictórica; me encanta esa alquimia.
Esta serie específica de figuras femeninas también se intensifica escultóricamente porque, al trazar el contorno de sus cuerpos, trazo la sensual sensación tridimensional que recuerdo haber visto. Es como si la mano recorriera la piel de un cuerpo, como si fuera una escultura figurativa. Esta conexión mental entre lo físico y lo plano es escultórica para mí.
“Estoy siguiendo el misterio, que ha liberado las limitaciones y permite una revelación infinita. Esto me mantiene curiosa.”
— Cheryl Pope
CW
¿Qué artistas estás observando o leyendo que han inspirado esta obra?
CP
Entrevistas con Francis Bacon realizadas por David Sylvester, entre otros. Bacon habla constantemente sobre el sistema nervioso en relación con la experiencia artística. Nos hemos enfrascado tanto en el "mensaje" que olvidamos que la experiencia visual es para...
https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2024/10/23/cheryl-pope-by-carolina-wheat/
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