Food for the Spirit (Image no. 4), 1971
Adrian Piperexpand_more
Selenium tone gelatin silver printexpand_more
The Ted and Dr. Roberta Mann Foundation Endowment Fundexpand_more 2021.20.2
Not on Viewexpand_more
Adrian Piper’s “Food for the Spirit” was a visionary performance in every sense of the term: it anticipated ways of seeing, expressing, and understanding the self through the intersectional prism of race and gender at a time when neither was taken seriously by the art world. Created during a self-imposed period of isolation and study in 1971, in which the artist routinely fasted, did yoga, and read Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Piper at times felt the edges of selfhood dissolving or even annihilated. To counteract her feelings of disassociation, and to document the transcendent experience of grappling with Kant, Piper photographed herself standing before a mirror while reciting existentially challenging excerpts of the text. The resulting photographs reveal Piper seemingly at the boundary between existence and the void; as a Black woman artist practicing in the early 1970s, each photograph explicitly engages “darkness” as a means for the creation, or subsuming, of individuality. These three prints stand as rare material evidence of a remarkably forward-thinking performance in the history of Conceptual art, and provide a visually striking introduction to Piper’s complex artistic and intellectual practices.
Details
- Title
- Food for the Spirit (Image no. 4)
- Artist Life
- born 1948
- Role
- Photographer
- Accession Number
- 2021.20.2
- Curator Approved
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