As a Black Woman I Feel an Urgent Need to Find Radical Solutions, from The Bad Air Smelled of Roses

An activist and self-described Afro-Futurist, Carl Pope, Jr. creates works that expose the history of racism against African Americans and envision the possibility of positive transformation through contemplation of the Black experience. “As a Black Woman, I Feel an Urgent Need to Find Radical Solutions” is a letterpress poster from “The Bad Air Smelled of Roses,” an ongoing essay about, in Pope’s words, “the ubiquitous presences and function of Blackness in society and nature.” Pope specifically chose this medium for his project to evoke ephemeral printed forms traditionally used to relate information or promote ideas, like broadsides, billboards, advertisements, wanted posters, and picket signs. Each work in “The Bad Air Smelled of Roses” presents language the artist encountered in a variety of sources, including modern Black literature, speeches of civil rights activists, music, film, advertising slogans, and personal conversations; each quote Pope finds and makes into a poster reflects a perspective or experience that for him articulates an aspect of Blackness. The present poster, printed with bold, black letters over a gray, wood-grain background, features a 1969 quote by civil rights activist, academic, and author Angela Davis that she wrote in response to an inquiry from UCLA, her employer, about her membership in the Communist Party.