"When I arrive, people react first to my height, then to my color, and then maybe they see Mark ... This body I was born in is still political in the United States", explains- he told AFP during the presentation of the exhibition "Agora", which opened Friday at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Serralves Foundation in Porto, in the north of Portugal.

"I negotiate with stereotypes every day of my life, but I don't identify with them," adds the affable man, over two meters tall, who explains that he had to cultivate his ability to "change shape".

Renowned for his philanthropic projects, particularly in favor of young people in the neighborhoods of southern Los Angeles where he grew up, he nevertheless refuses the label of activist.

American artist Mark Bradford in front of one of his paintings at the "AGORA" exhibition in Porto, Portugal, November 25, 2021 PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA AFP

"I'm just an artist, but maybe we should broaden the idea of ​​what an artist can be," he says, calling on his contemporaries to stop picturing artists "just as these tragic people and romantics that they sometimes like to see in the movies ".

Unicorn hunt

In Porto, a first series of unpublished works is inspired by tapestries from the beginning of the 16th century representing "La Chasse à la Licorne".

On these abstract canvases several meters wide, the original motif is obscured under several layers of paper, paint and other materials that form an irregular and variegated texture.

"In these world famous unicorn tapestries, what struck me is that it is basically carnage: something that is chased, something unusual, different," says -he.

This resonates with "the debates that were taking place in the United States about civil liberties, even as black Americans were literally being hunted," adds the 60-year-old artist.

American artist Mark Bradford in front of one of his paintings at the "AGORA" exhibition in Porto, Portugal, November 25, 2021 PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA AFP

Cited by Time magazine among the hundred most influential personalities of 2021, he had not mounted such an important exhibition in Europe since he represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2017.

Recurring obsessions

On other canvases, his thick paint, sometimes checkered or torn, covers maps representing the hot spots of the race riots that rocked Los Angeles in the 1960s.

There too, Mark Bradford draws parallels with the stories heard in his mother's hairdressing salon, but also with the riots he himself experienced in 1992, the appearance of AIDS or the current pandemic.

The artist finds common points between these different crises: certain elements of language and, above all, an "intense obsession" for maps and figures, "without thinking of people, only of data".

Evoking three works carried out in full confinement, alone in his studio, he also remembers the days in 1992 when he had to work in secret as a hairdresser, a profession he exercised before starting his art studies at 31 years old.

American artist Mark Bradford in front of one of his paintings at the "AGORA" exhibition in Porto, Portugal, November 25, 2021 PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA AFP

The exhibition presented in Porto until June 19, 2022 offers "a meditation of an artist engaged with the world, who is not isolated in his studio, who reacts, assimilates and bears witness to the time we are living", summarizes the artistic director of the Serralves museum, the Frenchman Philippe Vergne.

Its title, "Agora", a reference to the public debate space of ancient Greece, plays on the double meaning of a word which, in Portuguese, also means "now".

© 2021 AFP