Lorraine O'Grady
| Lorraine O'Grady | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1934 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Known for | Criticism, Conceptual Art, Performance Art |
| Awards | College Art Association's Distinguished Feminist Award in 2014 |
Lorraine O'Grady (born 1934 in Boston) is a New York-based artist and critic, who works in conceptual art and performance art that integrates photo and video installation. Her work explores the cultural construction of identity - particularly that of black female subjectivity - as shaped by the experience of diaspora and hybridity. Regarding the purpose of art, O'Grady has observed: "I think art’s first goal is to remind us that we are human, whatever that is. I suppose the politics in my art could be to remind us that we are all human."
O'Grady was born in Boston to Jamaican parents, who helped establish St. Cyprian's, the first West Indian Episcopal church in Boston. Drawn to the form and aesthetics of the "high church" of nearby St. John's of Roxbury Crossing, O'Grady recalls: "I was permanently formed by the aesthetics of that experience, of the rituals, which are a more stately and elegant version of Roman Catholicism. I did believe until my mid-twenties, until my sister [Devonia] died, then I stopped believing." As a young adult, O'Grady studied economics and Spanish literature at Wellesley College before becoming an artist in 1980.
In the 1980s, she created the persona of Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, who invaded art openings wearing a gown and a cape made of 180 pairs of white gloves, first giving away flowers, then beating herself with a white cat-o-nine-tails and shouting out poems that railed against a still-segregated art world which she perceived as not looking beyond a small circle of friends. In 1983, she choreographed a participatory performance called Art Is..., which consisted of a parade float she entered in the annual African-American Day Parade in Harlem. The float was shepherded up Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard by "O’Grady [in character as Mlle Bourgeoise Noire] and a troupe of 15 African-American and Latino performers, dressed all in white, [who] walked around the float carrying empty gold picture frames." The performance not only encouraged onlookers - primarily people of color - to consider themselves art, but also drew attention to racism in the artworld. Beginning in 1991 she added photo installations to her conceptually based work. And in 2007, she made her first video installation during a residency at Artpace in San Antonio, Texas.
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