Lorraine O'Grady, Mlle Bourgeoise Noire celebrates with her friends, from Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Goes to the New Museum, 1980 – 83/2009. Silver gelatin fiber photograph, 7 × 9.31 in. (17.78 × 23.65 cm). © Lorraine O'Grady/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim.
Alongside other unforgettable projects produced by O’Grady over the past half century, “Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And”, currently at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, marks the first major career survey of the renowned conceptual artist whose work has long challenged prevailing understandings around gender, race, and class.
Originally organized by the Brooklyn Museum in March 2021, the exhibition charts the development of O’Grady’s artistic production spanning collage, photo-installation, performance, and video. It brings focus to the artist’s skillful subversion of the “either/or” logic inherent in the Western philosophical canon, and explores her longstanding commitment to the reasoning of “both/and.”
Excerpted words written by Chadd Scott in Forbes.
