Image: Adrian Piper, The Probable Trust Registry: The Rules of the Game #1-3, 2013 (detail). Installation and participatory group performance. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation. Courtesy of the artist and Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie
Serpentine will present Adrian Piper, I'm This Space: Selected Works 1967 – 2027 at Serpentine South Gallery in London from late May until 5 September 2027. The exhibition is the artist's first major solo exhibition in the UK in over 30 years.
Known for her work as a conceptual artist and analytical philosopher, Piper (b. 1948, New York City) has lived and worked in Berlin since 2005. Her practice explores the nature of the self, individual agency and identity politics. Her works often cultivate doubt or ambiguity, prompting viewers to question long-held beliefs about the construction of race and gender, the nature of truth, and the social and political context in which value systems are formed. She draws on potent symbolism while avoiding singular interpretations, creating space for debate and contemplation, and through irony, humour and play she underscores the role of the audience in bringing diverse perspectives — and therefore multiple meanings — to the work.
Spanning six decades, the exhibition brings together works selected in close collaboration with Piper, reflecting the breadth of her practice across installation, sculpture, participatory performance, video, digital imagery and drawing.
Audience participation is central to that practice. In Adrian Moves to Berlin (2007), a video work featuring the artist dancing in Alexanderplatz, visitors are invited to dance alongside her in front of the projection. The exhibition also presents The Probable Trust Registry: The Rules of the Game #1-3 (2013), an installation and participatory group performance, in the UK for the first time. The work was presented at the 2015 Venice Biennale, where Piper received the Golden Lion for Best Artist.
A new publication accompanies the exhibition. It features two historic works on paper, Parallel Grid Proposal for Dugway Proving Grounds Headquarters (1968) and Untitled Map/Circle (1969), alongside new works created by Piper specifically for the exhibition.
The London presentation follows a series of recent solo exhibitions, including Adrian Piper: Who, me? at Portikus, Frankfurt (2024); RACE TRAITOR at Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan (2024); and Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions 1965–2016 at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2018), which travelled to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
