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Meer, 2026

"I dream I cross the river in one stride" brings together the work of Clémence Gbonon, Brittney Leeanne Williams, and Autumn Wallace in an exhibition inspired by Lorraine O’Grady’s landmark essay Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity. Presented at Mariane Ibrahim, the exhibition explores Black female subjectivity beyond inherited binaries, embracing complexity, embodiment, vulnerability, and self-definition. Through painting and sculpture, the artists create images that are self-authored, expansive, and resistant to fixed categories, extending O’Grady’s enduring influence on contemporary art and feminist discourse.

Lorraine O'Grady Legacy and Influence black women artists I dream I cross the river in one stride Black feminism Frantz Fanon black female subjectivity sculpture The Wretched of the Earth painting Contemporary Painting Mariane Ibrahim Chicago Art Scene feminist art Contemporary Art Olympia's Maid group exhibition identity Clémence Gbonon representation Autumn Wallace Black Contemporary Art Brittney Leeanne Williams

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Chicago Reader, 2026

Reviewing After O'Grady at Mariane Ibrahim, Rachel Dukes examines how three contemporary artists—Autumn Wallace, Brittney Leeanne Williams, and Clémence Gbonon—extend the legacy of Lorraine O'Grady’s influential essay Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity. Through painting and sculpture, the exhibition explores Black women’s subjectivity beyond limiting binaries, emphasizing embodiment, movement, spirituality, and liberation. The exhibition demonstrates the continuing relevance of O'Grady’s ideas for contemporary artistic practice.

black women artists Exhibition Review Black feminism Legacy and Influence black female subjectivity sculpture painting Mariane Ibrahim feminist art Contemporary Art Olympia's Maid After O'Grady identity Rachel Dukes representation Clémence Gbonon Black Contemporary Art Autumn Wallace Lorraine O'Grady Brittney Leeanne Williams

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Artforum, 2019

For Artforum, Colby Chamberlain articulates the nuanced, critical value of O’Grady’s “haiku diptychs.” In the review, he traces O’Grady’s deconstruction of print language to the post-Modernist lineage of Benjamin, Derrida, and Mallarmé, which she taught at the School of the Visual Arts around the same time the prints were in production.

deconstruction language cultural critique The New York Times Just Above Midtown 2019 Surrealism Jacques Derrida Dada Stéphane Mallarmé modernism School of the Visual Arts representation avant-garde literature Nick Mauss haiku diptychs Cutting Out The New York Times Mlee Daniel Reich Gallery Iowa Writers Workshop Cutting Out CONYT

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Hyperallergic, 2018

Chase Quinn casts light on O’Grady’s performance personas in his review of the exhibition From Me to Them to Me Again. The writer considers the artist’s persona of Mlle Bourgeoise Noire to exemplify her career of fighting against art world racism and Western binarism at large.

race and politics Linda Goode Bryant Iowa Writers Workshop representation 2018 black women artists From Me to Them to Me Again western cultural hegemony Afro-Caribbean hybridity Cutting Out The New York Times Irish Just Above Midtown post-black Savannah College of Art and Design black avant-garde Egypt SCAD Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Cutting Out CONYT SCAD Museum Art Is... The New York Times Wellelsey College art-world racism segregation the news Landscape (Western Hemisphere)

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The Drama Review, 2018

Drawing on the Black Feminist scholarship of Hortense Spillers, Beth Capper interprets O’Grady’s performances as representing life lived in the “interstice” between two worlds. The rigorously academic essay situates O’Grady’s work in a lineage of radical Black artists (David Hammons and Jean-Michel Basquiat, to name two) who deal with the limits of language and the politics of visual representation.

western cultural hegemony in between Art Is... sex and sexuality feminism academic journal Miscegenated Family album aesthetics black female subjectivity juxtaposition Egypt the body Black feminism Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Hortense Spillers hybridity art-world racism refusal Jean-Michel Basquiat representation 2018 Just Above Midtown David Hammons the instertice black avant-garde Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution interupption political art black women artists limits of representation Mlle Bourgeoise Noire

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