Contemporary artist Adrian Piper, will
give a performance, “Talking Pictures,” on Thursday, May 1, at 6 p.m. in the F.W.
Olin Center
Auditorium.
Her performance, the annual
Katharine Van Meter Sadock Lecture on Women in the Arts is sponsored by the
College's Women's Studies Program, Department of Visual Arts, and a College
IEF Grant.
The event is free and open to the
public.
Piper wears several hats – artist,
art theorist, educator, and philosopher. Often her varied roles overlap. She
once wrote, “My art work has a purifying and strengthening effect on my
philosophy work.” Her conceptual performances and two-dimensional artwork
confront the issues of gender, racial stereotyping, and xenophobia.
In addition, Piper's art is
exhibited internationally and she has a prodigious publication history. Her
philosophical works take a feminist reading and critique of Kant and Hegel.
Currently Piper is a full professor of philosophy at Wellesley
College.
Born in Harlem
of mixed racial heritage, Piper early on exhibited the polymath's intellectual
and artistic insatiability. As a child she received music and art lessons and
later as a teen attended the School
of Visual Arts. While still an
adolescent, her conceptual art works were published in 0 to 9 magazine.
Her political awareness also
developed early and was fourteen when she attended the March on Washington.
It can be no surprise that her artwork elicits such descriptors as “radical,”
“political,” and “confrontational.”
Piper is a summa cum laude, Phi
Beta Kappa graduate of the City College of New York. After completing her Ph.D.
in philosophy at Harvard University,
she taught at the University of Michigan,
Stanford and Georgetown universities,
and University of California-San Diego.
Piper is the recipient of numerous
awards including NEA, NEH, and Guggenheim fellowships. Her artwork is exhibited
in international venues and to date has had nearly 200 solo exhibits.
During Piper's visit, related
activities and events will include a roundtable discussion with students, the
continuous display of her work via projected images in the Campus
Center, a formal dinner, and
receptions.
A reception will follow
immediately in the Olin Rotunda.
For more about Adrian Piper and
her art, visit http://www.adrianpiper.com