The loss of subjectivity through psychoactive drugs also has a long history in Piper's parallel career of philosophy, with the notion of being "outside yourself" brought about by LSD in particular raising interesting philosophical questions about the constitution of self through conscious perception. These early paintings are often viewed as separate from her later, more Conceptual works of art, yet as writer Craig Hubert points out in the Observer, ".there can be found in these early drawings and paintings the emergence of a lifelong preoccupation with the mutability of identity, a self-exploration that looks both inward and outward, which is a hallmark of the psychedelic experience." This dual approach, where Piper sees herself both through her own eyes and those of an outside observer, would become a central focus as her practice developed, which as Hubert points out, "allows both a sense of removal and a deeper embrace".
Piper wrote about observing herself and her experiences "from the inside out", and here brings together both her inner experiences with the drug and the viewpoint of an outsider looking on as she disappears into a trance-like state. Piper made these paintings as an attempt to capture the experience of psychedelic drugs in order to retain and communicate the potential of LSD to teach people about themselves.
#Layers of fear self portrait series
Her strange, hallucinogenic experiences were recorded in the painting series LSD Paintings, made between 19, which document the experience of the drug through forms reminiscent of the then fashionable Op Art, with geometric shapes which seem to swell in and out of the painting in an approximation of the merging of real and imaginary during a trip. In around 1965, just as she was beginning her fine art degree at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Piper experimented with the still-legal drug LSD, which she took about six times over 6 months as part of a personal mission to go "beyond the surface of things". Her pose resembles that of a classical female nude, yet this similarity is partially undone by her reduction to a stark black and yellow silhouette. The nude figure in the centre of the canvas is Adrian Piper herself, seen in the reflection of a mirror. Her foundation (The Adrian Piper Research Archive) works to support other interdisciplinary scholars who might similarly struggle to balance two concurrent and interrelated careers.ġ966 LSD Self-Portrait from the Inside OutĪngry and jagged forms in acrid yellow, outlined with black and red, expand outwards from a central female figure, forming a tight web that seems to mutate across the surface of the painting. She maintains her artistic practice alongside a career as an academic within the subject area of philosophy, and sees the two roles as informing each other. Piper is committed to working across multiple disciplines and areas of scholarship.Perhaps most indicative of this conviction is her insistence that she would not return to the United States after some time abroad until her name had been removed from the "watch list" of potentially subversive passengers. Piper's work and personal life are blurred, and she maintains a commitment to the significance of symbolic action in her interactions with artistic and educational institutions, authority figures and governments.This provided an inspiration for a slightly later generation of independent and multi-disciplinary female artists (including Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman), a legacy that has only recently come to be acknowledged as significant in the development of this kind of work. As a female artist and scholar, Piper's work often also interrogates her experiences of sexism and misogyny.
#Layers of fear self portrait skin
By drawing on her experience as a person of mixed racial heritage her work interrogates the assumptions made about identity as it relates to skin color, revealing the underlying racism and hypocrisy of Western society, particularly in the United States.
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