HOW I BECAME AN OBJECT IN ADRIAN PIPER'S SHOW...
In this piece, I photographed my reflection in Adrian Piper’s sculptural works displayed on an excavated wall behind glass, as well as in another etched mirror. Both works are inscribed with the words “Everything will be taken away.” These words resonated with me on multiple levels, as they spoke to impermanence, erasure, and the forces that strip away identity and agency. Before my visit, I spent a day reflecting on Piper's 1971 piece Food for the Spirit, in which she documented herself after several days of fasting and reading Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I was deeply moved by the way Piper interrogated her own body, identity, and the physical and mental endurance required to confront the philosophical rigor of Kant’s work.
As a brown Latinx woman artist, I found myself particularly affected by the intersection of Piper's work and the correctional facility directly across the street from the gallery. This juxtaposition—of a multi-million-dollar gallery housing contemporary art and a prison where women, often marginalized due to systemic racism and injustice, were incarcerated—intensified my reflection. The contradiction felt visceral, reminding me of the ways in which art and institutions can either reinforce or challenge societal inequities. The presence of both spaces created a tension that brought Piper’s work into a deeper, more personal context for me. Like a roll of the dice, statistics could have drawn me in either location across the street from each other.
Before exiting the exhibition, I left behind a postcard of my own work, Woman with Egg Eyes, positioned carefully behind three of Piper's pieces. This gesture was an act of presence, an attempt to leave a trace of my own identity in a space where both visibility and erasure were at play.