ARTnews, 2023
ARTnews, 2023. In this list of 100 Greatest New York City Artworks, O’Grady’s “Art Is…” is named fifth for its joyous celebration of Black life and art outside the institutional setting of museums and the mainstream art world.
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The New Yorker, 2022
Lorraine O’Grady Has Always Been A Rebel—In this conversation for The New Yorker, Doreen St. Felix and O’Grady discuss the artist’s nonconformist attitudes which she cultivated in childhood, rebelling from a middle class, Black immigrant family. This spirit of rebellion foregrounded O’Grady’s interest in the avant-garde and her penchant for conceptualism.
Jean-Michel Basquiat Lucy Lippard 2022 the Black and White Show New Museum Conceptualism Just Above Midtown Linda Goode Bryant Jamaica black avant-garde Harlem both/and Rivers First Draft Body is the Ground of My Experience Brooklyn Museum diptych Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution Announcement of a New Persona (Performances to Come!) Mlle Bourgeoise Noire the Caribbean the knight Art Is... race and class black female subjectivity writing in space Cutting Out The New York Times Olympia's Maid Wellesley College Boston Village Voice
New York Times, 2022
Siddhartha Mitter interviews Simone Leigh on Sovereignty, her installation for the U.S. Pavillion at the Venice Biennale. Leigh’s mentor, O’Grady, expresses enthusiasm for the symposium Loophole of Retreat that will accompany the show in October 2022.
critical race theory hybridity exhibition design historiography Brooklyn both/and black avant-garde gaze black women artists Loophole of Retreat Simone Leigh political art anagama black writers Guggenheim immigrant photography between worlds erasure/invisibility freedom Venice Biennale agency Chicago race and class enslavement US Pavillion Picasso the Kitchen 2022 Harriet Jacobs sovereignty modernism ceramics Conceptualism Incidients in the Life of a Slave Girl feminism Venice Harlem sculpture Jamaica black female subjectivity Africa Studio Museum public practice Black feminism 1931 Colonial Exposition blackness Zora Neale Hurston colonialism architecture resistance “Conspiracy” (2022)
Collector Daily, 2021
Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And @Brooklyn Museum—Loring Knoblauch provides a comprehensive review of O’Grady’s Both/And retrospective offering a detailed listing of the artworks displayed, and the mapping of the show. Looking closely at each component presented at the Brooklyn Museum, Knoblauch finds that what emerges is the importance of conceptualism and idea-driven practices to O’Grady’s work.
Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Conceptualism Art Is... both/and Miscegenated Family album Brooklyn Museum black female subjectivity The Fir-Palm 2021 Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Aruna d’Souza Harlem Catherine Morris hybridity Body is the Ground of My Experience the knight Just Above Midtown black women artists Rivers First Draft the Caribbean diptych The Strange Taxi photo-installation Egypt
Artforum, 2021
Risk Everything—Ahead of the “Both/And” retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, Catherinne Damman writes an insightful essay on the varied art and career of O’Grady. Of her many practices, Damman sees “risk as [O’Grady’s] primary medium,” foregoing easy stratifications in favor of deep inquiry and interrogation of the structures that bind.
The Dinner Party Mlle Bourgeoise Noire race and class Judy Chicago Art Is... Ancient Egypt Cutting Out CONY Miscegenated Family album Cutting Out The New York Times The Clearing both/and Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Brooklyn Museum Olympia's Maid 2021 Boston Stephanie Sparling Williams Linda Goode Bryant Aruna d’Souza the Black and White Show Harlem Joe Biden Just Above Midtown Body is the Ground of My Experience Catherine Morris photo-installation the Caribbean
Catherine Damman, Mira Dayal, and David Velasco, Artforum, 2021
Upon the opening of O’Grady’s retrospective Both/And, Artforum devotes much of its March 2021 issue to her prolific art practice. Catherine Damman provides a decades-long overview of her career, Mira Dayal focuses on Miscegenated Family Album, and David Fiasco interviews the artist on new works in progress.
becoming an artist Cutting Out CONYT photography Nefertiti’s Sister Linda Goode Bryant language diaspora seriality Harlem erasure Aruna d’Souza The Clearing Family Portrait 1 (Formal Body is the Ground of My Experience anti-Blackness Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Composed) western cultural hegemony Catherine Morris Olympia's Maid Cutting Out The New York Times hybridity modernity Boston Egypt the Black and White Show The Dinner Party art-world racism Jamaica Just Above Midtown Outlaw Aesthetics Caribbean both/and Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Leon-Gontran Damas displacement Announcement of a New Persona (Performances to Come!) Art Is... The New Museum New York Times 2021 Miscegenated Family album Hortense Spillers
Hyperallergic, 2017
Upon the opening of the group exhibition We Wanted A Revolution, Jessica Bell Brown celebrates the Black female artists-activists who made space to create their own art world in the 1970s and 80s, including Lorraine O’Grady, Linda Goode-Bryant, and Senga Nengudi. Brown reminds her audience that the work doesn’t stop at this exhibition; she strongly urges museums to acquire the exhibited pieces into their permanent collections.
Maren Hassinger Kellie Jones Linda Goode Bryant 1960s Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 Harlem Women’s Liberation Toni Morrison Studio Z 1970s Senga Nengudi AIR Gallery Just Above Midtown 2017 Black liberation black avant-garde black women artists Women Students and Artists for Black Liberation Mlle Bourgeoise Noire black writers protest 1980s Brooklyn Museum AfriCOBRA white feminism radicalism Combahee River Collective art-world racism We Wanted A Revolution Eileen Harris Norton performance art
Frieze, 2016
Frieze, 2016. In an essay interrogating uses of racial representation and depiction in photography, Evan Moffitt highlights O’Grady’s “Art Is…” 1983 performance which used a literal frame to metaphorically reframe thoughts on what constitutes art and who is allowed to participate in its creation.