Adrian Piper

The seven-part sculptural series What It's Like, What It Is #2 (1991), commissioned by the Hirshhorn Museum and not exhibited since 1992, breaks from Piper's Conceptual use of the frame and grid, confronting the viewer with photographic cut-out figures both iconic and anonymous sourced from movements in American History, from the civil rights era to the early 1990s. In each iteration, red text superimposed over appropriated newsprint spells “Forget”—a formal strategy that Piper began in the late '80s with the Ur-Mutter works, one of which is also included in the exhibition. Other, grid-based works such as the Decide Who You Are (1992) series and Ashes to Ashes (1995) expand this motif, incorporating fields of text into triptychs that juxtapose self-portraits and portraits of family members with appropriated and archival photographs dealing with American political issues revolving around race, racism, neoliberalism and the Right. The exhibition will also present a special opportunity to see a range of the artist's video practice with installed, theatrical screenings of the 20th Century Video Set, a compendium of her time-based works for camera.