Adrian Piper is an American conceptual artist and philosopher. She was born on September 20, 1948, in New York City. She studied art at the School of Visual Arts and graduated with an associate's degree in 1969. Piper then studied philosophy at the City College of New York and graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's in 1974. She received a master's in philosophy from Harvard University in 1977 and her doctorate in 1981.

Known for addressing issues of ethics, gender, class, and race, Piper’s work addresses how and why those involved in more than one discipline may experience professional ostracism, otherness, racial passing, and racism by using various traditional and non-traditional media to provoke self-analysis. She uses reflection on her own career as an example. 

In 2018, the artist’s most comprehensive exhibition to date “Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965–2016,” opened at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in collaboration with the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. The artist currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Today, her works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.