Lorraine O’Grady and Simone Leigh
Credits:
By Alexis Jacquet, Fall 2021/Winter 2022
Curatorial Intern and Angelique Rosales
Salgado, Curatorial Assistant
June 7, 2022
“From the Archives” is a series that spotlights The Kitchen’s history. As a complement to our Archive Website, these posts offer focused reflections on the artists, exhibitions, events, and institutional practices that have defined and shaped The Kitchen since its founding in 1971.
Lorraine O’Grady is a concept-based artist who works across text, photo-installation, video and performance, and whose contributions to art history and intersectional feminism have been paramount. We are proud to honor O’Grady as one of two honorees at the 2022 Kitchen Gala Benefit. On this occasion, we celebrate her sweeping legacy in community with The Kitchen’s history and in conversation with Simone Leigh, and artist working in sculpture, installation, video, and social practice, whose first institutional solo show was at The Kitchen in 2012.
“BLACK ART MUST TAKE MORE RISKS! Black art must take more risks!” In 1980, the artist Lorraine O’Grady interrupted the opening-night benefit of Just Above Midtown—a gallery founded by Linda Goode Bryant in 1974 that championed primarily Black artists and artists of color from New York City and Los Angeles. O’Grady made a scene as her performance persona Mlle Bourgeoise Noire (Miss Black Middle Class), a French- Guianese pageant winner dressed in a handmade ball gown made of 180 pairs of white gloves. Announcing her entrance with the exclamation above, Mlle Bourgeoise Noire handed out chrysanthemums from a heavy bouquet to a room full of surprised art patrons, artists and collaborators. Once the flowers were gone, she was left with what she called the “whip-that-made-plantationsmove,” and proceeded to take off her cape and whip herself for five minutes while shouting poems protesting the segregated art world at that time. [1] This radical debut as O’Grady’s entrance into the art world has come to be known as one of her most celebrated and widely cited performances. ( … )