Conceptual artist Adrian Piper is well known for introducing her particular ideas of race and gender into the world of conceptual art. In Cornered, the viewer is shown a well dressed woman: Piper, in a TV screen directly in front of the audience. She begins her piece by making the statement “I’m black. Now, let’s deal with this social fact, and the fact of my stating it, together” (Kocur 182). This original statement sets up the whole course for the entire conversation that Piper has with her audience; and conversation is what she has. The way the installation is set up, the viewer is sitting in a chair, directing facing Piper, while she is sitting at a table facing the viewer allowing for an intimate feeling. That this piece is to be a dialogue between Piper and ourselves is understood right from the beginning: the artist is communicating her beliefs directly to us, using words.
Throughout her conversation with the viewer, Piper never raises her voice; instead she prefers to speak softly and slowly, allowing for emphasis on certain parts. She discusses the problems that are raised within our society by forcing people to join our racial clubs, and that by refusing to join ours, what questions she is thus bringing to the table. In today’s society, we prefer not to discuss race, and within her first sentence, Piper is not only discussing it, but rejecting her white identity. She says to the viewer that it is this rejection that is seen to society as her being hostile to Caucasians, and that we (society) believe that it is better to just leave race out of it, or that it’s “inherently better to be identified as white” (Kocur 182). But it is these racial identity questions that Piper is constantly asking. That while she is saying that she is black, she states later on that she is also white, confusing the audience members. Piper believes that without direct statement, the common belief is that the person’s identity is white. That it is only once directly stated that a person becomes black. Her question to society is why should this be? Why should a person have to state their identity for it to be understood, especially when the majority of Americans have African American heritage yet they do not count themselves as black (Kocur 184)? She asks the audience to decide for themselves, what their identity should be. Do they follow after society and let others figure it out for them, or do they capture it and own their own?
"APRAF: Adrian Piper." Welcome to the APRA Foundation. Web. 02 Feb. 2010. .
Kocur, Zoya, and Simon Leung, eds. Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985. Malden: Blackwell, 2005. Print.
After reading "Cornered", I questioned if the majority of society is actually "black" then why is white still seen as the ruling majority? It is perplexing to think that we should not have to consider race or sexuality of a human being, but yet we still do. Even farther than that, the idea of a heirarchial division between races. What really makes "whites" the superior race? Why does society base everything off race rather than personality and intellegience of an individual?
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