Henry Martin: In 2015 the artist and philosopher Adrian Piper was awarded the Golden Lion at the 56th Venice Biennale for her work The Probable Trust Registry: The Rules of the Game #1-3 (2013). One of the art world’s major accolades, the award is also often considered to celebrate an artist’s overall practice. For Adrian Piper, this practice continually evolves in new directions, and resists easy categorisation.
Traditionally, – by her own admission on her brilliant “removed” and “reconstructed” Wikipedia page – Piper has used different media (film, performance, installation, prints etc.) to question issues stemming from her own life, but also the times and place of her practice.
As a young mixed-race artist in NYC in the 1960s and 1970s (and beyond) Piper’s work interrogated the social prejudice toward race and gender in works such as Mythic Being (1973-75), Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features (1981), and Ur-Mutter #2 (1989). Expanding beyond the self, these concerns evolved to expose the blanket racism at the heart of society and visual culture in the U.S. and farther afield. These works, such as the installation, Safe (1990) often implicate the viewer in a way that might be uncomfortable, but which also offers the opportunity for social action and, dare one say it, the opportunity for change.
In 2018 MoMA presents a large retrospective of Piper’s work in Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965–2016. Here, audiences will have the opportunity to connect with Piper’s rich, varied, and extensive body of work, in turns emotive and conceptual.
To learn more about Adrian Piper, please visit the above ” Wikipedia Page,” or watch the artist discuss The Probable Trust Registry below.
Image credits from Top to Bottom,
The Probable Trust Registry: The Rules of the Game #1-3, 2013. Installation + Participatory Group Performance: three embossed gold vinyl wall texts on 70% grey walls; three circular gold reception desks, each 1,83 m D x 1,6 m H; contracts; signatories’ contact data registry; three administrators; self-selected members of the public. #13001.1-3. Photo credit: E. Frossard. Courtesy Elizabeth Dee Gallery. Collection of the Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin. © APRA Foundation Berlin.
Ur-Mutter #2, 1989. Rephotographed newspaper image on photographic paper, enlarged, mounted on foam with silkscreened text, 40⅝” x 23⅞””, (101.6 x 58.4 cm). #89004. Photo credit: Peter Turnley/ Newsweek; Andrej Glusgold. Collection of Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin.
Safe #1-4, 1990. Mixed-media installation: Audio sound track with 4 panels, each black and white photo with silkscreened text, mounted on foamcore and affixed to four corners of room: 42” x 30¼”; 39 1/4” x 24 5/8″; 24 15/16″ x 30 7/16″; 39″ x 44 5/16″ (106,6 x 76,9 cm; 99,8 x 62,6 cm; 63,4 x 77,3 cm; 99 x 112,7 cm) #90008.1-4. Detail: Panel #1 of 4. Collection of the Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin. © APRA Foundation Berlin.
Safe #1-4, 1990. Mixed-media installation: Audio sound track with 4 panels, each black and white photo with silkscreened text, mounted on foamcore and affixed to four corners of room: 42” x 30¼”; 39 1/4” x 24 5/8″; 24 15/16″ x 30 7/16″; 39″ x 44 5/16″ (106,6 x 76,9 cm; 99,8 x 62,6 cm; 63,4 x 77,3 cm; 99 x 112,7 cm) #90008.1-4. Detail: Panel #2 of 4. Collection of the Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin. © APRA Foundation Berlin.
Safe #1-4, 1990. Mixed-media installation: Audio sound track with 4 panels, each black and white photo with silkscreened text, mounted on foamcore and affixed to four corners of room: 42” x 30¼”; 39 1/4” x 24 5/8″; 24 15/16″ x 30 7/16″; 39″ x 44 5/16″ (106,6 x 76,9 cm; 99,8 x 62,6 cm; 63,4 x 77,3 cm; 99 x 112,7 cm) #90008.1-4. Detail: Panel #3 of 4. Collection of the Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin. © APRA Foundation Berlin.
Safe #1-4, 1990. Mixed-media installation: Audio sound track with 4 panels, each black and white photo with silkscreened text, mounted on foamcore and affixed to four corners of room: 42” x 30¼”; 39 1/4” x 24 5/8″; 24 15/16″ x 30 7/16″; 39″ x 44 5/16″ (106,6 x 76,9 cm; 99,8 x 62,6 cm; 63,4 x 77,3 cm; 99 x 112,7 cm) #90008.1-4. Detail: Panel #4 of 4. Collection of the Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin. © APRA Foundation Berlin.
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