Lorraine O'Grady (1934 - 2024) was an artist and critic whose installations, performances, and texts address issues of diaspora, hybridity, and black female subjectivity, with special reference to the role these have played in the history of modernism. The New York Times in 2006 called O’Grady “one of the most interesting American conceptual artists around.” And in 2007 Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, her landmark 1980 performance initiated five years before the founding of the Guerrilla Girls, was made an entry point to “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” the first major museum exhibition of this groundbreaking art movement. After that, O’Grady’s career expanded exponentially — with inclusions in such significant group shows as the Whitney Biennial (2010), the Paris Triennale (2012), “This Will have Been: Art Love and Politics in the 1980s” (MCA Chicago, 2012), “Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art” (CAM Houston, 2012), and “En Mas’: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean” (CAC New Orleans, 2015), and with acquisitions by the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and the Art Institute of Chicago, IL, among many others.
Portrait by Elia Alba for Supper Club Project
