Cooper Hewitt says...
The American artist and author Pippa Garner (1942-2025) addressed systems of consumerism, marketing and waste to create a multidisciplinary body of work tthat includes drawing, performance, sculpture, video and installation over her five decade-spanning career.
Born Philip Garner in Evanston, Illinois,Garner began her career working on an assembly line at a Chrysler plant in Detroit. Seeking to avoid the Vietnam War draft, she enrolled in the Industrial Design program at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. Eventually drafted, Garner served as a combat artist, documenting ground action in Vietnam. After her military service, she returned to ArtCenter but was expelled in 1969 for presenting a car sculpture as her graduate work.
She continued this exploration between sculpture and consumer culture with the Backwards Car, 1974, a work facilitated by Esquire magazine, which agreed to pay for a used Chevrolet, the body of which was removed from its chassis by Garner – who did all of the mechanical work herself – then flipped around and refastened, so the car appeared to be driving backwards when it was moving forwards and vice-versa. Stunts like the Backwards Car drew the attention of artists and the art world. Garner’s circle during the 1970s and early 1980s grew to include West Coast artists such as Ed Ruscha, Chris Burden, and the radical art and design collective Ant Farm, whom Garner would collaborate with. Another collaborator, the painter Nancy Reese, was a major influence. Trained in a fine art tradition, Reese – at once Garner’s creative and romantic partner – introduced her to contemporary art institutions and communities, as well as to the idea that Garner might identify as an artist herself.
Garner had started gender hacking in 1984 by privately taking oestrogen procured illegaly. She later described the decision as an ‘aha’ moment of inspiration: “In my earlier work,” she explains, “I was always using objects that were consumer goods, things that came off assembly lines. I remember looking in the mirror one day – this was in the ’80s – and I thought, ‘Hey, I’m an object, too. I’m just another appliance.’” Gender, as Garner saw it, was the cornerstone of consumer identity, while the body was a technology, not so different from a car.
Despite being highly productive on a personal and local level, Garner's professional art career was largely dormant from 1986 to 2014, with only one exhibition in 1997 as part of Hello Again!, a recycled art show at the Oakland Museum. Gender discrimination played a role in this absence, compounded by her reluctance to seek institutional recognition. From 2014 until her death in 2025, Garner’s transdisciplinary work gained international recognition. Her major exhibition Act Like You Know Me, curated by collaborator Fiona Duncan, traveled across multiple venues, beginning at Kunstverein München in 2022, then moving to Kunsthalle Zürich (February–May 2023), 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine in Metz (February–September 2023), and White Columns in New York (starting November 2023). The exhibition's comprehensive monograph published in 2022, provides a critical survey of Garner's radical and transdisciplinary art practice over fifty years. She also participated in Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living, the Hammer Museum’s biennial, curated by Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramírez. In 2023, her book $ELL YOUR $ELF was published, offering a kaleidoscopic survey of her five-decade career, including her explorations in gender hacking, custom cars, and inventive solutions to everyday problems. In 2024, she was featured in the Whitney Biennial, Even Better Than the Real Thing, curated by Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli. Her final major exhibition, Misc. Pippa (2024–2025), was a dual solo show at STARS Gallery in Los Angeles and Matthew Brown Gallery in New York, tracing her artistic evolution from early works like the 1969 Kar-mann sculpture to her later explorations of personal identity. These exhibitions and publications cemented Garner’s place in contemporary discourse, highlighting her radical, transdisciplinary approach and lasting cultural significance.
