You don’t get to dictate the terms under which the work you put out there is received. “Mlle Bourgeoise Noire” is an extremely directed body of work. This trilogy that I did, [it was all about] what’s wrong with the art world, and what we need to do to remedy it. That work became so popular that it just took over. It’s been a bit of a struggle to get the other work—which is more what I consider the core of what I’m about, the anti-binary argument and all that—that’s a little bit harder to establish, I’ve found. "Lorraine O'Grady Has Always Been a Rebel" The New Yorker (interview by Doreen St. Felix published on September 29, 2022)
African American conceptual artist (1934–2024)
Lorraine O'Grady (September 21, 1934 – December 13, 2024) was an American artist, writer, translator, and critic. Working in conceptual art and performance art that integrates photo and video installation, she explored the cultural construction of identity – particularly that of Black female subjectivity – as shaped by the experience of diaspora and hybridity. O'Grady studied at Wellesley College and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop before becoming an artist at the age of 45. Regarding the purpose of art, O'Grady said in 2016: "I think art's first goal is to remind us that we are human, whatever that is. I suppose the politics in my art could be to remind us that we are all human."
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