Adrian Piper

This book grows out of the first European retrospective in more than 20 years dedicated to celebrated Berlin-based American conceptual artist and Kantian philosopher Adrian Piper (born 1948). Race Traitor brings together more than 100 works including installations, videos, photographs, paintings and drawings spanning 60 years of her career, highlighting her analysis of the "visual pathology" of racism and the image of African American people determined by society and many widespread stereotypes. Established as a Conceptual and Minimalist artist on the New York art scene of the late 1960s, Piper raises often uncomfortable questions about politics and racial and gender identity, asking people to confront truths about themselves and the society in which they live. The permanent struggle against racism, xenophobia, social injustice and hatred is the core of her philosophical, artistic and activist practice. Her research has inspired entire generations of contemporary artists.

In 2005 American artist and philosopher Adrian Piper (born 1948) secretly emigrated from the United States. Several months passed before anyone realized she had disappeared. She resurfaced in Berlin and has lived there ever since. Piper has consistently and firmly refused to return to the US or explain why she left. Many assume it was because she discovered her name on the Transportation Security Administration's Suspicious Travelers watchlist. Others point to Wellesley College’s forcible termination of her tenured full professorship. Yet others speculate that George W. Bush’s presidency, or American racism, or the invasion of Iraq compelled her to leave. All these conjectures are groundless. Escape to Berlin: A Travel Memoir is a gripping autobiographical narrative that provides a full account of the facts from the artist herself. Previously out of print, this essential memoir returns in English for fans of the beloved conceptualist to discover and enjoy anew.

Published for MoMA’s retrospective exhibition and in collaboration with the artist, this volume presents new critical essays that expand on Piper's practice in ways that have been previously under- or unaddressed. Focused texts by established and emerging scholars assess themes in Piper’s work such as the Kantian framework that draws on her extensive philosophical studies; her unique contribution to first-generation conceptual art; the turning point in her work, in the early 1970s, from conceptual works to performance; the connection of her work with her yoga practice; her ongoing exposure of and challenge to xenophobia and sexism; and the relation between prevailing interpretations of her work and the viewers who engender them.

Diarmuid Costello is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick and former Chair of the British Society of Aesthetics.

Jörg Heiser is Editor-at-Large of Frieze, Professor of Art Theory, Criticism and Interdisciplinarity and Director of the Institute for Art in Context at Berlin's University of the Arts.

Kobena Mercer is Professor in History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University.

Nizan Shaked is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History, Museum and Curatorial Studies at California State University Long Beach.

Vid Simoniti is the inaugural Jeffrey Rubinoff Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge University.

Elvan Zabunyan is an art critic, Professor of Art History and Director of the Curatorial Program at Rennes 2 University, France.

Cornelia Butler is Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. David Platzker is former Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Adrian Piper has consistently produced groundbreaking work that has profoundly shaped the form and content of conceptual art since the 1960s. Strongly inflected by her longstanding involvement with philosophy and yoga, her pioneering investigations into the political, social, psychological and spiritual potential of conceptual art have had an incalculable influence on artists working today.

Published in conjunction with the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date, this catalog presents more than 280 artworks that encompass the full range of Piper’s mediums: works on paper, video, multimedia installation, performance, painting, sound and photo-texts. Essays by curators and scholars examine her extensive research into altered states of consciousness; the introduction of the Mythic Being—her subversive masculine alter-ego; her media and installation works from after 1980, which reveal and challenge stereotypes of race and gender; and the global conditions that illuminate the significance of her art. Previously unpublished texts by the artist lay out significant events in her personal history and her deeply felt ideas about the relationship between viewer and art object. This publication expands our understanding of the conceptual and post-conceptual art movements and Piper’s pivotal position among her peers and for later generations.

Adrian Piper (born 1948) is a first-generation conceptual artist and analytic philosopher. She received an AA in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in 1969, a BA in Philosophy with a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Musicology from the City College of New York in 1974 and a PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University in 1981. Piper’s artwork is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Generali Foundation and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Los Angeles, among others.

Cornelia Butler is Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

David Platzker is Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Christophe Cherix is Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at MoMA.

Tessa Ferreyros is Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Marking Lévy Gorvy’s first solo exhibition with acclaimed conceptual artist and philosopher Adrian Piper (born 1948), this focused presentation includes examples from The Mythic Being series (1973–75), It’s Just Art (1980) and Here, an installation work conceived in 2008 and realized for the first time at the gallery. Together, these three bodies of work delve into interrelated themes Piper has explored throughout her career—the intersubjective formation of self, identity, race and gender; racism, sexism, xenophobia and competing conceptions of political responsibility. The book includes an essay by Begum Yasar and Aliza Shvarts, “Alienation, Too, Has Its Uses,” which thinks through Piper’s writings and works to discuss contemporary manifestations of xenophobia and racism. Also included are a biography of the artist and color plates of the works.