{"id":44969,"date":"2016-01-05T00:50:54","date_gmt":"2016-01-05T00:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=44969"},"modified":"2017-03-09T19:03:16","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T19:03:16","slug":"everyones-problem-adrian-piper-tackles-the-complexities-of-race-relations-head-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=44969","title":{"rendered":"Everyone’s Problem: Adrian Piper Tackles the Complexities of Race Relations Head-On"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone’s Problem: Adrian Piper Tackles the Complexities of Race Relations Head-On<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Artspace<\/a>
\n2015-12-30<\/p>\n

Artspace Editors<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nAdrian Piper<\/a> receiving her Golden Lion<\/a> from the 2015 Venice Biennale<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The artist and philosopher Adrian Piper\u2019s<\/a><\/strong> direct and subtly intellectual approach to unpacking the tangled issues of race, gender, identity, and belonging has inspired a generation of socially-conscious artists across all media, although her impact is just now being fully recognized: she was the recipient of the Golden Lion<\/strong> for best artist at this year\u2019s Venice Biennale<\/strong><\/a>, and MoMA<\/strong> has recently announced plans for, in the words of Robin Pogrebin in the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, \u201cthe most comprehensive exhibition to date on the conceptual<\/a> artist,\u201d set to open in 2018. In this excerpt from Phaidon\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> Defining Contemporary Art<\/em><\/a>, the curator Connie Butler<\/strong> responds to one of Piper\u2019s most important video and installation works, Cornered<\/a><\/em> from 1988.<\/p>\n

Adrian Piper\u2019s conceptual explorations of race and difference have made her a critical influence on subsequent generations of artists exploring race and the construction of identity. By 1988\u2014after two decades in which she moved from a relatively traditional conceptual art practice to using her own body in her work, and to locating her subject matter in the fluidity of identity\u2014she had begun to explore her own struggles with racial identity: namely, people\u2019s assumptions about her race and their corresponding behavior towards her.<\/p>\n

The pivotal video installation Cornered<\/em> addresses this in the straightforward, analytical fashion common to all of Piper\u2019s work. Viewers encounter the artist herself, a light-skinned black woman, looking out at them from a monitor placed in the corner of a room. On either side of it hang her father\u2019s two birth certificates\u2014one that identifies him as white, the other as black. A large table upended in front of the monitor distances us from all this, keeping Piper at a remove in space. Despite this, the artist faces us calmly and begins matter-of-factly. \u201cI\u2019m black. Now, let\u2019s deal with this social fact, and the fact of my stating it, together. Maybe you don\u2019t see why we have to deal with it together. Maybe you think this is just my problem, and that I should deal with it by myself. But it\u2019s not just my problem. It\u2019s our problem.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The artist and philosopher Adrian Piper\u2019s direct and subtly intellectual approach to unpacking the tangled issues of race, gender, identity, and belonging has inspired a generation of socially-conscious artists across all media, although her impact is just now being fully recognized: she was the recipient of the Golden Lion for best artist at this year\u2019s Venice Biennale, and MoMA has recently announced plans for, in the words of Robin Pogrebin in the New York Times, \u201cthe most comprehensive exhibition to date on the conceptual artist,\u201d set to open in 2018. In this excerpt from Phaidon\u2019s Defining Contemporary Art, the curator Connie Butler responds to one of Piper\u2019s most important video and installation works, Cornered from 1988.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,395,1196,25],"tags":[2938,22550],"class_list":["post-44969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-autobiography","category-literary-criticism","category-women","tag-adrian-piper","tag-artspace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44969"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52260,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44969\/revisions\/52260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}