Piper made this series over a summer as she undertook an intensive study of the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1871) while fasting, practicing yoga, and isolating. “The Critique is the most profound book I have ever read, and my involvement in it was so great that I thought I was losing my mind, in fact, losing my sense of self completely,” she said. “To anchor myself in the physical world, I ritualized my frequent contacts with the physical appearance of myself in the mirror, through Food for the Spirit."
Vital Signs: Artists and the Body, November 3–February 22, 2024
Gallery label from Multiplex: Directions in Art, 1970 to Now , November 21, 2007-July 28, 2008.
In addition to her art practice, Piper is a philosopher whose scholarly career includes teaching and writing. This series was made over a summer in which she studied Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason intensely and put herself on a disciplined regimen of fasting, yoga, and isolation. Subsumed in Kant's thought, she often felt she was losing her sense of self. She has said, "To anchor myself in the physical world, I ritualized my frequent contacts with the physical appearance of myself in the mirror, through Food for the Spirit."
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