Decide Who You Are

Decide Who You Are
by Adrian Piper
Adopted
in recognition and celebration of DeMaurice F. Smith, for his passion for and ability to inspire and empower people to define what matters, why it matters and to do things that matter.
on December 3, 2021
Adrian Piper, Decide Who You Are cover

Decide who you are : texts / Adrian Piper.

By Adrian Piper. New York, NY: Paula Cooper Gallery, c1992.

Philosopher and conceptual artist Adrian Piper, known for her photography, installations, and performances, is one of the most influential artists of our time. Decide Who You Are: Texts is a book of poems about power, race, privilege, and inequality. The book accompanies Piper’s 1992 photo-text collage series Decide Who You Are, which juxtaposes a compilation of commonly invoked phrases of denial and intimidation with photographs and drawings. Piper describes the series as addressing, “Two interconnecting themes: class conflict and academic issues relating to class conflict and class elitism particularly with regard to race.” In Decide Who You Are: Texts, readers can engage with Piper’s work on a personal level, in a way that is not available in a regular gallery space.

Discover more about this book in our Catalog.

Adoption Type: Build and Access the Collection

Location: 
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Library