LORRAINE O'GRADY

 

Featuring works spanning four decades (1981-2021), the exhibition examines the artist's revolutionary conceptual practice and the critical yet nuanced ways in which she explored tensions around race, gender, and colonialism. Guided by the rebellious and powerful nature of the iconic personas the artist created during her career–from her earliest, Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, to her most recent, the Knight–the exhibition explores four distinct periods within O’Grady’s oeuvre, in which performance consistently played a central role and a unifying vision. 

 

At the heart of the exhibition is Rivers, First Draft (1982), a one-time performance described by Lorraine O’Grady as a “collage-in-space” that charted her life from childhood to adulthood while blending her Caribbean and New England heritage. Embracing a “Both/And” philosophy, O’Grady rejected binary thinking in favor of complex, layered identities, drawing heavily on Surrealism and avant-garde influences to develop a collage aesthetic that fused psychological and historical elements. Later, she transitioned from live performance to “writing in space”—installations using diptychs to convey narrative, as seen in her 1991 series Body is the Ground of My Experience, particularly The Clearing, which critiques colonialism and racial dynamics through photomontage. These works affirm the body as a site of both historical imprint and resistance, encapsulating the intellectual and emotional power that defines O’Grady’s legacy as a transformative force in  art.