This in-depth analysis of Adrian Pipers art locates her groundbreaking work at the nexus of Conceptual and feminist art of the late 1960s and 1970s.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965-2016, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, March 31-July 22, 2018, traveling to Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, September 30, 2018-January 6, 2019, and Haus der Kunst, Berlin, April 12-September 22, 2019.

An analysis of the complex engagements with issues of identity in the performances of the artists Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin, Anna Deavere Smith, and Nikki S. Lee.

This work provides a more literal take on the title of Ed Ruscha's iconic photobook 'Colored people' (1972). It is a collaboration with sixteen people who were asked to photograph themselves, acting out metaphorical moods related to colour. Piper then took responsibility for selecting and sorting the photographs, depending on her response to the expressions. According to Piper, the book "was intended as a light-hearted conceptual gesture with serious implications".--Publisher's website.

Published in conjunction with MoMA's retrospective exhibition and in collaboration with the artist, this scholarly volume presents new critical essays that expand on Piper's practice in ways that have been previously under- or unaddressed. Focused texts by established and emerging scholars assess themes in Piper's work such as the Kantian framework that draws on her extensive philosophical studies; her unique contribution to first-generation Conceptual art; the turning point in her work, in the early 1970s, from Conceptual works to performance; the connection of her work with her yoga practice; her ongoing exposure of and challenge to xenophobia and sexism; and the relation between prevailing interpretations of her work and the viewers who engender them.

Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and the leap into another. This revelatory history of passing explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions. It also tells a tale of loss. As racial relations in America have evolved so has the significance of passing. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. After emancipation, many African Americans came to regard passing as a form of betrayal, a selling of one’s birthright. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on one’s own. Although black Americans who adopted white identities reaped benefits of expanded opportunity and mobility, Hobbs helps us to recognize and understand the grief, loneliness, and isolation that accompanied—and often outweighed—these rewards. By the dawning of the civil rights era, more and more racially mixed Americans felt the loss of kin and community was too much to bear, that it was time to “pass out” and embrace a black identity. Although recent decades have witnessed an increasingly multiracial society and a growing acceptance of hybridity, the problem of race and identity remains at the center of public debate and emotionally fraught personal decisions.

After a hate crime occurs in his small Texas town, Adrian Piper must discover his own power, decide how to use it, and know where to draw the line in this “powerful debut” novel (Publishers Weekly, starred review) exquisitely illustrated by the author. Adrian Piper is used to blending into the background. He may be a talented artist, a sci-fi geek, and gay, but at his Texas high school those traits would only bring him the worst kind of attention. In fact, the only place he feels free to express himself is at his drawing table, crafting a secret world through his own Renaissance-art-inspired superhero, Graphite. But in real life, when a shocking hate crime flips his world upside down, Adrian must decide what kind of person he wants to be. Maybe it’s time to not be so invisible after all—no matter how dangerous the risk.