Adrian Piper
1948 (New York)
Living in : Berlin
Working in : Berlin
Artist's webSite
A major figure in American conceptual art, Adrian Piper, after graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1969, studied philosophy at City College of New York and then obtained a PhD from Harvard University in 1981. Influenced by Sol LeWitt, she embraced conceptual art in the late 1960s, and it was in the following decade that she infused her artistic practice with a social and political dimension. African American, Piper grew up in Harlem and was immersed in a school and academic environment where Black people were in the minority. She was thus confronted early on with the gaze of others, despite her skin color being almost white: a “racial belonging (which) gives her a social reason… in contradiction with her physical appearance” (Elvan Zabunyan). Another significant anecdote: several times in the 1970s, she was ejected from the contemporary art world upon the discovery that she was a woman, as her masculine-sounding name led to confusion. It is around this duality of being a Black woman artist that Adrian Piper constructed her artistic and theoretical identity.
Living in : Berlin
Working in : Berlin
Artist's webSite
A major figure in American conceptual art, Adrian Piper, after graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1969, studied philosophy at City College of New York and then obtained a PhD from Harvard University in 1981. Influenced by Sol LeWitt, she embraced conceptual art in the late 1960s, and it was in the following decade that she infused her artistic practice with a social and political dimension. African American, Piper grew up in Harlem and was immersed in a school and academic environment where Black people were in the minority. She was thus confronted early on with the gaze of others, despite her skin color being almost white: a “racial belonging (which) gives her a social reason… in contradiction with her physical appearance” (Elvan Zabunyan). Another significant anecdote: several times in the 1970s, she was ejected from the contemporary art world upon the discovery that she was a woman, as her masculine-sounding name led to confusion. It is around this duality of being a Black woman artist that Adrian Piper constructed her artistic and theoretical identity.