Everything Will Be Taken Away # 21. Adrian Piper, 2010- 2013. Chalk on vintage black boards (Installation), 120 cm x 250 cm. 56th Venice Biennale, 2015
Adrian Piper’s artwork derives in its entirety from her life experiences and is an embodiment of the paradoxical racial categories assigned to her. From this inner window, her cathartic autobiographical art practice comes forth into the world in a way that is both personal and universally relevant. The piece entitled Everything Will Be Taken Away # 21, is part of a larger body of work entitled ‘Everything’ that started in 2003 in the midst of the artist’s long crisis in a legal battle against her former employer, Wellesley College where she was a philosophy professor. Due to the hostile working environment she was in, and several confrontations with the institution, Piper filed suit, and eventually left the United States after an unfavorable ruling.
As her professional situation, health, finances, and emotional well-being deteriorated, as commented on by the artist in her travel memoir ‘Escape to Berlin’ , with great disappointment Piper decided to process her emotions by collecting her personal photographic memories of her now “questionable” friendships. She encountered the reality that many of the platonic and professional relationships she had were premised not on genuine affection, but on convenience and calculating self-interest. The photographs used at the first stage of the series were originally taken for the work ‘I am Some Body, The Body of my Friends’ (1995), produced after the artist’s mother passed away and who, from Piper’s words, was her only ‘real friend’. As a result of the new interpretation for the ‘Everything’ series, the same images were transformed into enlarged photocopies in black and white, printed onto ¼” ruled graph paper.
The faces were erased by wearing away the image and the paper, and the text ‘Everything will be taken away’ was overprinted in a “dried blood” color; one of the main signatures of Adrian Piper’s work.
I Am Some Body, The Body of My Friends, 1992-1995. Suite of 18 “selfie” photographs, 15 color and 3 black and white, each 12”x 8" (30,5 cm x 23,3 cm). #95003. Photo credit: Galeria Emi Fontana. Collection of the Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin. © APRA Foundation Berlin.
Most of the people depicted in these photographs are the same unresponsive friends that caused great disappointment to the artist during the time of her collapse.
The act of fading away these people's faces along with her own, was a performative act of disconnection and vanished trust. ‘Everything’ unfolded as a spiritual exercise of becoming aware of the disconcerting fact that we stand alone in the world or what she calls “the illusion of community”. The entire series develops from this repetition of the mantra ‘Everything will be taken away’ as a symbolic reminder of the impermanence of life, recalling the Latin cliche’ Memento Mori (‘Remember that you must die’).
Everything # 5.2, 2004. Plexiglas wall corner insert engraved with gold leaf text, 24 " x 48" (61 cm x 121.9 cm). #08037.2. Photo credit: Andrej Glusgold. Collection of the Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin. © APRA Foundation Berlin.
Many displays have been created from this performance. The deteriorating state of the artist who at the time was fighting cancer while also dealing with the aforementioned legal issues was channeled in the piece analyzed here: Everything Will Be Taken Away # 21. The relevant significance of this work goes beyond the borders of any particular institution. As the experience embodied within the artist’s life is a testament of the many political/racial issues in America, her participation as a member of this educational institution not just informs, but also relates to those who do not occupy the aristocratic “1%”.