This month’s post is another artist highlight, about the incredible performance artist, philosopher, conceptual artist, and photographer Adrian Piper! Her work, which poignantly addresses themes of gender, otherness, race, ostracism, and self-analysis, has greatly impacted Post-Modern, Feminist, and Conceptual art. Her genre-defying, multifaceted, revolutionary work spans various disciplines and media, and her ongoing career has lasted six decades. Born in the United Sates in 1948, she is now in her 70s, she lives and works in Berlin.
Early life and work
Adrian Piper was born in New York City , and is an “American woman of acknowledged African ancestry”. She grew up in an upper-middle-class, mixed-race family in Manhattan, attending predominately white private schools. After high school, she studied visual arts, specifically painting and sculpture, and then completed a bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD in philosophy. Much of her philosophical practice focuses on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Vedic philosophy, both which have inspired much of her art. Piper first began exhibiting her artwork internationally at just 20 years old. She gained an artistic reputation with her LSD paintings (1965-67), some of which were completed while she was still in high school, and are now important contributions to the international canon of psychedelic art.
Conceptual Art
In 1968, Piper met Sol Lewitt, and became connected to various Conceptual artists through him. This began her career in Conceptual art, an interest she carries in her work to this day. Part of the first generation of the movement, she yoga and meditation practices into her work, and later introduced themes of race, xenophobia, and gender to the movement with her various performance series and installation works.
Minimalism
In the 70s, Piper delved into Minimalism, introducing political content to the movement. Many Minimalists, in their attempt to completely avoid referencing or representing any real-life concept or object, tended to avoid themes that were political or meaningful in any way. However, many of these artists were heterosexual white men, privileged enough to live life without being negatively impacted by politics. Piper’s work, Art for the Art World Surface Pattern (1976) was a small room, with completely blank, solid white walls on the outside. On the inside, however, every surface was covered with images from newspapers depicting human atrocities, embossed with the phrase, “Not A Performance”.
Performance Art
Catalysis (1970-72)
Besides painting, sculpture, and installation, many of Piper’s artistic projects have taken the form of performance art. In her series Catalysis (named after her ability to “catalyse” or affect audiences), Piper challenged perception in various ways, by expressing herself in unconventional ways in public spaces: some of these included wearing clothing soaked in vinegar, eggs, milk, and cod liver oil on public transport (Catalysis I); taking the subway with a white towel stuffed in her mouth, shopping at Macy’s dripping in paint (Catalysis III, pictured above); and filling her purse with ketchup. In these performances, she challenged the definition of “ordinary”, behaving in ways just strange enough to be considered inconvenient, abnormal, or illogical, but not forbidden or illegal.
Mythic Being (1973-75)
In another performance, Mythic Being, Piper disguised herself as a young Black man, wearing sunglasses, tattered clothes, and a mustache and Afro wig, repeating sentences from her diary in a continuous loop. She would walk around like this in public spaces, exposing strangers’ xenophobic and racist reactions to this character.
Funk Lessons (1982-4)
After graduating from her PhD in philosophy, Adrian Piper started a series of lecture-performances entitled Funk Lessons, in which she would teach primarily white art-world audiences about the history of African-American funk and soul music, as well as characteristic dance moves from the genre. Here is a video from Piper’s website if you want to see a clip of one of the classes in action!
Later life and work
Calling Cards (1986-90)
My Calling (Card) #1, 1986 
My Calling (Card) #2, 1986
From the 1980s and 90s to present, Piper has continued to work in a variety of disciplines, media, and themes. Her Calling Cards series consisted of business cards addressing various issues she faced, that she would hand out whenever pertinent. The first addressed racism: uncomfortable moments when people, unaware of Piper’s race, made offensive comments against Black people around her. The second tackled sexism, specifically unwanted attention women inevitably receive in various public spaces due to the lack of respect men have for them. The third card, My Calling (Card) #3: Guerrilla Performance for Disputed Territorial Skirmishes (2012), deals with a similar issue to the second: it reads “DO NOT TOUCH, TAP, PAT, STROKE, PROD, PINCH, POKE, GROPE OR GRAB ME. These cards satirically tackle sexism and racism, disrupting harmful cultural norms that Piper and many others are affected by.
Self-Portrait as Nice White Lady, 1995 
Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features, 1981
Other works by Piper have continued to address racial themes; Close to Home (1987) portrays images of “friendly-looking” black people, with carefully chosen questions below: “Do you have a black colleague at your place of employment?” “Have you ever had a sexual relationship with a black person?” In her video installation Cornered (1988), a video monitor placed in a corner behind an upturned table plays a recording of Piper, who speaks to the viewer about her African American identity, the subjective nature of race, and the entangled history of whiteness, blackness, and American identity.
Other works are more personal; Ashes to Ashes (1995) documents the story of Pipers’ parents’ deaths, both caused by smoking-related illnesses. Her ongoing work started in 1985, What Will Become of Me, documents her life in a row of jars containing pieces of Piper’s hair and skin and other body matter, accompanied with text describing various moments in her life, like the breakdown of her marriage and losses of her job. The work will be completed upon Piper’s death.
Philosophy
Besides art, Piper is an accomplished philosopher and professor (I decided not to go into detail about these aspects of her work since I am by no means an expert on the subject). In 1987, Piper became the first tenured African American woman professor in the field of philosophy at Georgetown University. In 2008, while on unpaid leave in Berlin, she refused to return to the US having been listed as a “Suspicious Traveler” on the U.S. Transportation Security Administration Watch List, which caused Wellesley College to terminate her tenured professorship. She has lived in Berlin since 2005. In 2002 she founded the Adrian Piper Research Archive in Berlin, and in 2011 the Berlin Journal of Philosophy. She has received many awards for her contributions to art and philosophy alike, and has had various international retrospective exhibitions.
Piper’s work is confrontational and revolutionary. She forces the viewer to reckon with the parts of theirself they don’t want to acknowledge; prejudice, mortality, and identity. She highlights issues that art and art history have neglected, and challenges the very institution she takes part in. Piper’s work is unique, unprecedented, and very much relevant; it has been since the beginning of her career, and will be long after her lifetime.
