NEW YORK, 15 November 2000 - The 52-year-old American artist Adrian Piper played a formative role in the emergence of Conceptual art in the 1960s and 1970s and an even more crucial role in the development of identity-based art in the 1980s and 1990s. Simply put, Piper's adept use of several media makes us share her preoccupation with bigotry, stereotyping, and xenophobia.
One of her most important works, a pencil drawing entitled, Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features attempts to reconcile her experiences as a light-skinned black woman in a racist society. In addition, this comprehensive survey of Piper's 35-year career includes several remarkable works in video and audio from 1968 to 1991, outlining her early experimentation with new media in conjunction with her ongoing interests in Conceptualism, racism and identity. Adrian Piper also teaches philosophy at Wellesley College.