This essay will illustrate how race and ethnicity is a key factor to understanding identity and how artists express this throughout their work and their bodies We understand our bodies through experience and how ones body is seen by others and by society Historically the human body most notably the female form has been idealised and sexualised within the visual arts and the women within the paintings became spectators men act and women appear Berger 2008 Berger recognises that women watch themselves being looked at and that they become the object within a composition of a painting and appear to be looking at the audience rather innocently whilst displaying themselves in a position As time progressed however around the 1960s 1970 s the perception of the role of a woman was cataclysmic in terms of sexuality reproductive rights and within workplace also during this time the analysis of the previously idealised female form had begun to change Feminist artists reclaimed the female body Moma org 2014 and allowed it to be seen in a variety of different ways Adrian Piper is an American artist of mixed heritage and identifies as African American Her work deals with challenging racial stereotyping and xenophobia Rorimer 2004 Adrian Piper because of her lighter skin tone would be assumed white in a social setting which played a crucial role in her work and the awareness of inclusion vs exclusion as she did not want the racial group she identifies with to be ostracised In social experiment Catalysis III 1970
