Chris Pape, known by his tag Freedom, is an American painter and graffiti artist. He started tagging subway tunnels and subway cars in 1974 as "Gen II" before adopting the tag "Freedom". Pape is best known for his numerous paintings in the eponymous

Freedom Tunnel The Freedom Tunnel is a railroad tunnel carrying the West Side Line under Riverside Park (Manhattan), Riverside Park in Manhattan, New York City. Used by Amtrak trains to and from Pennsylvania Station (New York City), Pennsylvania Station, it g ...

, an Amtrak tunnel running underneath Manhattan's Riverside Park. Prominent paintings in the Freedom Tunnel attributed to Pape include his "self-portrait", featuring a male torso with a spray-can head, and "There's No Way Like the American Way" (aka "The Coca-Cola Mural"), a parody of

Coca-Cola advertising Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a cola soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. In 2013, Coke products were sold in over 200 countries and territories worldwide, with consumers drinking more than 1.8 billion company beverage servings ...

and tribute to the evicted homeless of the tunnel. Another theme of Freedom's work is black and silver recreations of classical art, including a reinterpretation of the

Venus de Milo The ''Venus de Milo'' or ''Aphrodite of Melos'' is an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek marble sculpture that was created during the Hellenistic art, Hellenistic period. Its exact dating is uncertain, but the modern consensus places it in the 2nd ...

and a full train car recreation of the iconic hands from Michelangelo's

Sistine Chapel The Sistine Chapel ( ; ; ) is a chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the pope's official residence in Vatican City. Originally known as the ''Cappella Magna'' ('Great Chapel'), it takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who had it built between 1473 and ...

. Chris Pape also was one of the first documentarians to cover the

mole people In the United States, the term mole people (also called tunnel people or tunnel dwellers) is sometimes used to describe homeless people living under large cities in abandoned subway, railroad, flood, sewage tunnels, and heating shafts. In docu ...

, homeless living underground in the Freedom Tunnel.

Sources

External links

Interview with Chris Pape
American graffiti artists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{graffiti-stub