Everything you need to know about Adrian Piper’s conceptual installations before you go and see them

Following on from her mammoth MoMa retrospective earlier this year (which is set to open in a more condensed form at the Hammer Museum in LA in early October) and her recent win of the prestigious Käthe Kollwitz Prize, it seems right to say that American artist and philosopher Adrian Piper is enjoying a moment. As an artist who has dedicated her 50+ year career to disrupting societal apathy and inciting action through her performative, conceptual and minimalist works, Piper’s art is particularly relevant in an era increasingly defined by indifference and demagoguery. From her earliest works, such as the ‘60s LSD paintings — trippy amalgamations of shapes and figures made under the influence — through to her important and transformative performances in the early ‘70s — for example the Catalysis series which saw Piper wearing stinking clothes on the New York subway and wet paint, and The Mythic Being where she assumed the disguise of a black man to question the stability of race and gender identities (Piper’s parents were of of mixed racial and African American heritage)  — right up to her brandishing of the loaded phrase “Everything will be taken away” in her stirring Everything series (2003-13), Piper’s art has always sought to raise consciousness and shatter the passivity of daily life.

“The power of art is unlimited for social change,” Piper once said. This sentiment is the subject of her current exhibition at Berlin’s Akademie der Künste in honour of winning the Käthe Kollwitz Prize. The exhibition, which is divided into three installations, demonstrates many of Piper’s key artistic, philosophical and political ideas through a pared-down conceptual practice that insists upon the viewer’s compassion. Most significantly, the exhibition reveals how the now Berlin-based artist — Piper, originally from New York, has lived in the German capital since 2005 — employs a reduced aesthetic language to address timely issues on a personal and global scale. To glean a greater understanding of Piper’s thoughtful work, SLEEK caught up with the exhibition’s curator Anke Hervol to break down these multilayered installations in order to reveal what they can tell us about her impressive oeuvre as a whole.

1.  Mauer (2010) 

On entering the exhibition space, visitors are confronted with a wall of blinking TV screens stacked in formations of five (there are 25 screens in total). The TVs bear a selection of randomly programmed images — static white and grey-flecked fuzz, American CBS test screens and real time footage of red roses. Without knowing what it represents, Mauer (which means “wall” in German) immediately warrants your attention.

According to Hervol, this work is closely connected to Piper’s move to Berlin in 2005 and how she wanted to make art related to that experience. “She installed her life in the (old) Eastern part of Germany, and started to inform herself about the GDR (German Democratic Republic of East Germany) — its formation and ideals based on communist and socialist ideas.” Hervol believes that the “video wall” is about the “disruption of information between East and West Germany” — “What do you see if you are interrupted? You see the test image and this kind of technical problem”. Where the CBS test image is a fragment of memory from Piper’s life in New York, which is likely to symbolise a Western ideal, the roses are loaded with multiple meanings. “For sure, they symbolise love and beauty, but on the other side, the rose and red carnation are socialist and communist symbols,” Hervol points out. In this way Mauer — which exists at Pariser Platz where the Wall formerly ran through — boldly confronts the audience with a poetic representation of separation and divide, and what that means for the transmission of information. Significantly, Mauer represents Piper’s notable ability to infuse conceptual art with a personal angle — in this case her experience of fleeing to Germany.

2. Hier, (2018)

Where Mauer presents a breakdown of information, the second installation Hier presents words in their clearest, slightest form. A blank white wall reads: “ICH WAR HIER/ WIR WAREN HIER/ WIR SIND HIER”. The two other walls in the room repeat the phrase — which means “I was here/We were here/ We are here” — in Hebrew and Arabic. “After the monitors, this is a very silent space,” insists Hervol. And she’s right. There is a peacefulness to this work that feels at odds with the sort of energetic performances that Piper is known for. But despite the work’s quiet and contemplative “memorial character”, the installation is still a springboard for Piper’s necessary inquiries.

The words carved into the wall not only recall sombre memorial monuments, but are also inspired by the wall drawings of Piper’s lifelong friend, Sol LeWitt. Hervol says that the work is about “language, time and space” — the wall statements refer to the past and the future, why we are here. With regard to the use of the three different scripts — Arabic, Hebrew and Latin — Hervol believes that this is a meditation on religion and the conflicts that have arisen out of that. “For sure, if you have an installation with Hebrew, Arabic and Latin letters it has a lot to do with religion, and the fights around religion, which are not new but very old.” Hervol regards Hier to be a work of global significance, but with “a lot of meaning inside”.

Hier is an essential Piper work as it employs a nuanced visual language loaded with deep and far reaching meaning. As Hervol says, “Even to choose daylight and the white walls means that attention is focused completely on the letters — this is a statement”. Must importantly, it tackles the role of the collective ‘we’ in working through these complex, universally-relevant questions.

3. Das Ding-an-sich bin ich, (2018)

The final work in the exhibition was made specifically for the site at Pariser Platz. It consists of 8 mirrored cubes in a tiled room; each cube has a sound recording of a person speaking in either Farsi, Arabic, Icelandic, Hebrew, Turkish, Gaelic, Hindi, or Somali. In its form, Das Ding-an-sich bin ich recalls famous minimalist works such as Robert Morris’ Mirrored Cubes (1965) or LeWitt’s Variations on Different Types of Cubes (1967), but like all of Piper’s work, it pivots on matters of real human significance.

First and foremost, it references Piper’s philosophical studies (Piper gained a PhD in philosophy from Harvard in 1981) and Kant’s understanding of reality — ”Kant says that nobody can understand and see the real reality because everyone has their own reality,” explains Hervol. Combined with the jarring cacophony of voices, the mirrored cubes compel the viewer to question their place and position in society, to even swap places with the voices that can barely be deciphered. There’s no surer thing:  Das Ding-an-sich bin ich is a conceptual exercise in empathy, to put yourself in another person’s shoes and to question the stability of your so-called “reality”.

For Herval, the work relates directly to our contemporary condition — “We have a lot of migrants, we have a lot of people leaving their homes, and arriving in places where they can’t understand the language”. Overall, this work demonstrates Piper’s commitment to invigorating minimalist and conceptual art with a thoughtful sensitivity grounded in societal awareness. Without resorting to a didacticism, Piper’s art compels the viewer to reflect with the intention to act. As Hervol says at the end of our conversation, “Adrian Piper’s art makes you think more deeply and intensively about your own life, and how you can be engaged with your own empathy, and with the movements we are in all over the world”. Without a doubt, we need Piper’s pioneering work now more than ever. 

“Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2018: Adrian Piper” runs through to 14 October at Akademie der Künste.

“Adrian Piper: Concepts and Intuitions, 1965-2016” opens 7 October at the Hammer Museum.