Everything #8, 2006

          This particular piece is a mixed media installation that was made for the Copenhagen Kunsthal. It is a vitrine with glass, mirrors, and stenciled text on a pedestal. The vitrine measures 200 x 117 x 83 cm. The installation has the words “Everything Will Be Taken Away” wrapped around it. It resembles a reverse (non see-through) Jeff Koons One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (1985) with it's cubed three dimensional fish tank like shape. The vitrine played tricks on my mind because I thought that objects were placed inside it. I slowly began to realize that the mirrored objects BECOME the art on all sides. This piece is more objective rather than subjective. You can be the subject, but there is a tendency for objects to inhabit these particular areas of cities.The mirrored objects are objects which in a very literal and real sense will be taken away which includes anything and everything at any time or any place. It is not just about one's self. It is about all our beloved objects, which are things we tend to hold too dear to our hearts.  
          Over the course of time, many people have critiqued her work from all angles; some reviews find her shocking, while others find her work more thought provoking. However the wording may be with these critiques, their message is similar. Her work is still race, gender, and class biased. Another example of this similar-minded criticism is by oneartworld.com: "Since the late 1960s, Adrian Piper has forged a unique artistic practice that infused classical Minimal sculptural form with explicit political content and introduced issues of race, gender and identity politics into the vocabulary of Conceptual art. She has deployed permutation and seriation-which at the time that Piper began using them were considered non-traditional artistic media- as strategies for investigating the infinite variability of perceptual form and content. In recent years, her artwork has begun to intersect more explicitly with her philosophical work, resulting in a reconsideration of space, time, and infinity in defining the limits and potential permutability of the self as situated on a pre-established grid defined by social and political variables of race, sex, class conflict, and social relations."

           Almost everything about her work can be pared down to the last four words. But perhaps if not for these shocking ways of telling our history of the present, past, and future, we'd get swept up in another prehistoric racial wave. Adrian Piper is not only there to remind us of the personal. She is also here to remind us of the now. Her black and white photos of the aftermath of Katrina are not there to remind us of the tragedy and loss, but also to remind us that these are the problems of today, and circle of major issues to come. 




Rosenberg, Karen. One Art World. www.oneartworld.com. Jonas Almgren. 2005-2009.                            17 November, 2009. <http://oneartworld.com/Elizabeth+Dee/Everything.html>




Piper, Adrian. Adrian Piper Research Archive. www.adrianpiper.com. Dr. Constanze Von Marlin.
3 October, 2003. 17 November, 2009. <http://oneartworld.com/Elizabeth+Dee/Everything.html>

What it's Like, What it is #3 1991

  The Above photo is a constructed environment with video installation constructed for the Museum of Modern Art in N.Y. This art work contains lights, disks, four videos, bleachers, and music. I was drawn to this clip because it portrayed stereotypes of African Americans. All of the videos portrayed the same African American male turning counter-clockwise while reciting the stereotypes of an African American. This minimalistic art reminds me of the Warhol videos mixed with Robert Morris' untitled slab, (1968); white, clean and simple. The color also portrays a major role of the art in my opinion. It's as if the African American male is surrounded by the white society in America. The clip is almost five minutes long and can be seen here.
  C&R 1000 had a very interesting outlook on this particular piece: "Adrian Piper’s video works on racism are challenging, infuriating and surprising. Surprising because along with their poetic word play, didactic tutorials, and transformations of museum space into a loaded social arena for a society in denial, they also provoke honest and questioning discussions about race long after exiting the exhibition. It’s not often art gets you to interrogate yourself or your liberal attitudes under the guise of critiquing the artist’s work. Piper’s examination of her personal hurts around her blackness open us to the covert nature of racism as well as the more visible manifestations, such as the Rodney King beating. But it is in subtle videos like 1991’s Please, God, with young girls recorded dancing jubilantly in front of a store window, that we get a sense of the yawning cavern of unresolved troubles brewing beneath the bland and nebulous term ‘racism.’ Against the children’s good spirits scrolls a litany of prayers: “God lead them away from self-sacrifice. God help them to disobey. God teach them to fight back. God keep them from learning their place. God protect them from the rage and contempt that will accompany their understanding. . .” It is a prayer that terrifies even as we devoutly wish it to be granted. That’s the razor’s edge of Piper’s best work, when her insights become our own private contemplation."(The Museum of Contemporary Art [MOCA], Downtown).

          Her work is extraordinarily emotional and personal. I can’t help but wonder what her experiences were/are like as a bi-racial female. I can’t help but wonder if she was raised to think a certain way about herself. However, I do feel that she has unresolved issues. I hope that the election of our current president and the much more diverse government that we now have helps contribute to her healing wounds of this society we live in.

Piper, Adrian. "Adrian Piper Research Archive". Adrian Piper.com. Dr. Constanze von Martin.      
3 October, 2008. 11 November, 2009.<http://www.adrianpiper.com/art/g_what_its.shtml>


Lassarow, Bill. "www.artscenecal.com". Bill Lassarow. 2008. 12 November, 2009. 
<http://artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Archive/Articles2000/Articles1000/CR1000.html>

Everything #10, 2007

Artists Weekly: A Look at the Works of Adrian Piper, by Brianne Davis

 

Artists Weekly: A Look at the Works of Adrian Piper, by Brianne Davis

   

Adrian Margaret Smith Piper (b. 1948) is a first-generation Conceptual artist who began exhibiting her work internationally at the age of twenty and graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1969. While continuing to produce and exhibit her artwork, she received a B.A. in Philosophy from the City College of New York in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University in 1981 under the supervision of John Rawls; and studied Kant and Hegel with Dieter Henrich at the University of Heidelberg in 1977-1978.

            Throughout the years, Adrian Piper has made some interesting works. Her works tend to include people, print, mixed media, sound, video, lights, paint, stencils, and furniture just to name a few. Her work can be very geared towards racial bias, sex, and class from a personal and political standpoint. She tends to point out the problems in our society and the dealings with her racial identity, for example, her videos on YouTube called "Cornered, 1988".She also wrote a very lengthy letter to a NY Times editor in January, 2003 which    asks the editor not to call her a black, female, African American, female artist, philosopher, or woman in various ways or forms. She emphasizes the need to not label herself racially, or sex-wise. Her last known works were done with the above photo, and lasted about five years various forms from 2003-2008.

The above text on the gentleman's forehead reads "Everything Will Be Taken Away". The text was written in henna and was written backwards so that it could be displayed in a mirror. It was displayed at Cooper Union in N.Y., N.Y., at NYU at the Steinhardt Barney Building, as well as the Elizabeth Dee Gallery. I fell in love with this piece the moment I saw it. It evoked so much emotion inside me. The reason being is because I believe it talks about one's life; nothing in this world is permanent, especially us. When we die everything is taken away. It is some what of a harsh reality, but the look on this man's face says to me that he is peaceful, and ready when the time comes. These performances were public and volunteers were strewn all over  N.Y.C. This public display was brought to us by Creative Time, and the website had this to say about the displays: "Adrian Piper creates a poetic and philosophical duration performance in which the text “Everything will be taken away” will be written, in henna, on an unspecified number of participants’ foreheads that respond to an open call. The henna will be applied to respondents on May 1 and May 2. Written in reverse, the message becomes readable when seen through the reflection of a mirror, and the dye is anticipated to endure on the skin for 1- 2 weeks. The participants will be asked keep journals of their experiences and audience reactions during the project, then re-read the journals a year after the performance. Written directly on the forehead the text suggests the layered, shifting organization and loss of memory. It is both a promise and a threat. What will be taken away and what do we consider to be ‘our’ everything? Everything will be taken away is labeled #10 as it is the tenth rendition of the ongoing series the artist began in 2003. The simple prose has been displayed in a variety of media including sandwich boards and on personal photographs that have been photocopied, printed and erased. Contingent upon the context and relationship to the audience, the sentence reveals new aspects of its potential meanings with each adaptation. The endurance and repetition of the phrase is crucial to the series and the relationship to Piper’s writings and philosophical work. A student and teacher of philosophy and meta-ethics, Piper often employs Hindu philosophical imagery and concepts, such as the henna used in this project. " Megan Metcalf had this to say about the project: "On the next block, Adrian Piper's stunning Everything provides an abstract companion that kicks you squarely in the gut. The phrase "Everything will be taken away" appears in nearly every piece: over a mirror, the Bill of Rights, a gravestone-shaped hole in the gallery wall, the newspaper story of a gruesome kidnapping and rape, the photographs of Martin Luther King, Jr., JFK, Malcolm X, and others, and a garbage can full of trash. Her promise is both sinister and liberating, challenging us to consider the costs of freedom and asking if the erosion of freedom is something we have the power to halt."                                                                                                

          As you can clearly see from the above critics, art can evoke two completely different opinions on the art as well as the artist itself. This work reminds me of Marina Abramovic's Modern O from 1974. The concept is extrodinarily similar; the writing on one's forehead plus using live people as art. It is truly amazing how history can repeat itself.  




"O'Neil-Butler, Lauren.Art Forum International Magazine, Inc". 2008, May. findarticles.com. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_9_46/ai_n31609080/. Elizabeth Dee Gallery, NY.11 November, 2009.

<http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_9_46/ai_n31609080/>


Piper, Adrian. "Adrian Piper Research Archive". Adrian Piper.com. Dr. Constanze von Martin.                                                     3 October, 2008. 11 November, 2009.<http://www.adrianpiper.com/art/g_everything_no10.shtml>


Beasley, Mark. "Six Actions for New York City". Creativetime.org. Mark Beasley. 1 May, 2007.                                                   11 November, 2009.<http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2007/performance/piper.html>


Metcalf, Megan. "Fix - Eco art in NYC". fixproject.squarespace.com. Megan Metcalf. 13 April, 2008. 
11 November, 2009. <http://fixproject.squarespace.com/fix/2008/4/14/eco-art-in-nyc-and-online.html>