ArtNews, 2022
Nancy Princenthal reviews Simone Leigh’s 2022 exhibit Sovereignty which includes her first debuted video, “Conspiracy” that features O’Grady.
The Clearing
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Collector Daily, 2022
Loring Knoblauch considers Body Is The Ground of My Experience (1991/2019) as a “reprise” of O’Grady’s retrospective Both/And, exhibited the year prior. She suggests that the show is vital to understanding O’Grady’s late photographic prints.
2022 identity embodiment interdisciplinary body as landscape photomontage Conceptualism archive Jamaica hybridity other media lineage Miscegenated Family album Body is the Ground of My Experience Barbara Kruger photography blackness portraiture The Fir-Palm black women artists The Clearing The Strange Taxi Boston collage landscape
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.
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 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
The Philadelphia Tribune, 2021
In a review of the retrospective Both/And, Siddhartha Mitter sings the praises of O’Grady’s deft political critique. Having developed a rapport with the artist through his repeated reviews of her work, he quotes the artist in conversation: “I am making incisions on the skin of culture” […] “it is work I’ll be doing for the rest of my life.”
New York Times, 2021
Lorraine O’Grady, Still Cutting Into the Culture—Forty years after O’Grady debuted Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, declaring that Black art to take more risks, O’Grady receives her first retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum which features the launch of a new persona. In this profile, Siddhartha Mitter showcases how O’Grady has continuously pursued new ventures, pushing culture forward in her quests of discovery.
Jamaica Devonia/Nefertiti Miscegenated Family album both/and Stange Taxi writing in space Brooklyn Museum black female subjectivity The Clearing Announcement of a New Persona (Performances to Come!) Olympia's Maid Cutting Out CONYT hybridity Boston Aruna d’Souza Just Above Midtown New Museum Simone Leigh black avant-garde Linda Goode Bryant Catherine Morris Rivers First Draft the Caribbean Soul of a Nation diptych Cutting Out The New York Times We Wanted A Revolution Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Egypt criticism Art Is...
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.
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 becoming an artist Cutting Out CONYT photography Nefertiti’s Sister Linda Goode Bryant language diaspora seriality Harlem
Duke Up, 2020
For Those Who Will Know—In her introduction for O’Grady’s “Writing in Space,” the first collection of the artist’s writing, Aruna D’Souza illuminates the throughline of forward-thinking found in O’Grady’s groundbreaking art. Resisting the simple and rigid classifications that box in many women and Black artists, O’Grady has continuously complicated and challenged cultural notions of binarism. This provocation has taken form in all modes of her practices—from her seminal performance of alter ego Mlle Bourgeoise Noir to the recurrent diptychs bridging unexpected figures like Michael Jackson and Charles Baudelaire. D’Souza delineates how these works are foregrounded by O’Grady’s training as a writer.
western cultural hegemony Body Is the of My Experience Flowers of Evil and Good Cutting Out The New York Times hybridity Cutting Out CONTY The Clearing Village Voice the Black and White Show Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Rolling Stone black avant-garde Olympia's Maid Aruna d’Souza cultural criticism performance art 2020 diptych Landscape (Western Hemisphere) Iowa Writers Workshop RIVERS archive First Draft Miscegenated Family album Linda Goode Bryant Black artists Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution histography diaspora black women artists black female subjectivity Mlle Bourgeoise Noir writing in space
Media Diversified, 2017
Tonya Nelson traces histories of political protests and activism from the civil rights movement to the more contemporary Black Lives Matter movement – problematizing the roots of Western individualism at large. Her critique reveals itself through her analyses of works by Lorraine O’Grady, Maren Hassinger, and Linda Goode-Bryant, all featured in the group exhibitions Soul of a Nation and We Wanted A Revolution.
Art In America, 2016
Kirsten Swenson reviews “Lorraine O’Grady” at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts — Notes uncanny intersections of O’Grady’s early works with contemporary events. Concludes, “Now, we are beginning to see her art.”
Heather Kapplow, Hyperallergic, 2015
A Walk Through the World of Lorraine O'Grady — Heather Kapplow, the Boston reviewer, replicates O'Grady's working method by walking backwards, turning the exhibit itself into a diptych, video on one side, wall works on the other, setting in motion a permanent back-and-forth questioning and answering between the two so that the only resolution is to embrace a permanent, un-hierarchized equivalence.
Boston Globe, 2015
Cate McQuaid on "Where Margins Become Centers" — In this enthusiastic review of the Carpenter Center show, which she later discussed further in an end-of-year column on Boston's galleries, the award-winning critic declares that, after the early performances, O'Grady's work "grew more precise and more searing."
Harvard University, 2015
Carpenter Center Exhibition Booklet — One reviewer called it an "Indispensable brochure." Besides checklist and illustrations, Lorraine O'Grady: Where Margins Become Centers contains an incisive essay by the CCVA's curator James Voorhies, an article by O'Grady and interview by Cecilia Alemani,, as well as Andil Gosine's foundational essay, "Lorraine O'Grady's New Worlds."
Ancient Egypt modernism video art Michael Jackson sibling rivalry Landscape (Western Hemisphere) mother The First and the Last of the Modernists hybridity Where Margins Become Centers autobiography 2015 Miscegenated Family album Charles Baudelaire and Jeanne Duval the Caribbean diaspora western cultural hegemony The Fir-Palm sex and sexuality The Clearing
Andil Gosine, 2012
Unpublished article on New Worlds — The unpublished article by Gosine, a York University (Toronto) professor who'd written earlier on hybridity in O'Grady's work, is a perceptive and detailed analysis of the subject's treatment in her New Worlds show at Alexander Gray, NY.
Bennett Simpson, 2012
Blues for Smoke, Museum of Contemporary Art, LA — In a catalogue with the improvisational quality of the music, the final section of Blues for Smoke curator Simpson's essay "This Air" is titled "The Clearing," from a piece by O'Grady of that name in the exhibit, and discusses how the piece echoes the show's themes.
Andil Gosine for ARC, 2011
Lorraine O’Grady’s Landscape — In a new magazine devoted to artists from the Caribbean and its diaspora, a young Trinidadian-Canadian professor at Toronto’s York University sheds light on the role of hybridity in Landscape (Western Hemisphere) and its complementary work The Clearing.
Beyond/In Western New York, 2010
Wall Text, Carolyn Tennant, New Media Director, Hallwalls — Two complementary pieces, The Clearing, 1991, and Landscape (Western Hemisphere), 2010, were connected via the concept of the bridge, both in music and in O’Grady’s phrase, “Wherever I stand, I find I have to build a bridge to some other place."
Buffalo Biennial, 2010
Carolyn Tennant, New Media Director, Hallwalls — Catalogue essay for Beyond/In Western New York on O’Grady’s two-part exhibit: The Clearing: or Cortez and La Malinche, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, N. and Me, photomontage diptych, 1991; and her new complement to it: Landscape (Western Hemisphere)
Calvin Reid, 1993
A West Indian Yankee in Queen Nefertiti’s Court — The first critical article on O'Grady's work as a whole, and still one of the best. Published in New Observations #97: COLOR. September/October 1993. Special issue, edited by ADRIAN PIPER.
Ancient Egypt writing in space mother black female subjectivity The Fir-Palm Wellesley College The Clearing Girls Latin School Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline INTAR Gallery hybridity art-world racism Lilith Sends Out the Destroyers Just Above Midtown Lucy Lippard Gaze and Dream black avant-garde performance art autobiography Adrian Piper Mlle Bourgeoise Noire 1993 Art Is... the Caribbean diaspora