Lorraine O’Grady is Making Deep Cuts
On the occasion of her retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, the artist speaks to Malik Gaines about her process, politics and vision for a more equitable world.
By Malik Gaines, 2021.
Malik Gaines I’ve just finished reading your latest book, Writing in Space, 1973–2019, which was published last September.
Lorraine O’Grady Everything in the book reinforces the idea that I have been talking about the same things for 40 years, but nobody was listening before. I’m only just now able to get across my anti-binarist critique. Nearly since I started making art, I’ve been making diptychs rather self-consciously as an argument against Western binarism. While speaking with Catherine Morris, the curator of my retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, I slipped in this idea that my work is about ‘Both/And’, which she suggested we make the title of the show.
MG Why do you think people are listening now?
LG That’s the question, isn’t it? I think people weren’t really listening to anybody, not just me. In the art world, people of colour who write are not looked up to or we’re not looked for. They think they can still manage everything so that they don’t have to change anything. When people tell me, ‘Your work is so fresh, it could’ve been made yesterday,’ that’s a sure sign nothing has changed.
MG By ‘they’, I assume you mean the powers that be in white institutions.
LG There’s no question that museums are run for the trustees: they call the shots. This guarantees that the focus falls on the collections rather than on the progress of culture. In order for museums to be really meaningful, they would have to truly give up the privileging
of art for the market and exhibit art for change.
MG Was that why you started making art, to create change?
LG I actually started with the worst role models in the world: the surrealists, the dadaists and the futurists. They believed they could incite change, even if that change wasn’t always good. But, for about five years, I didn’t show anybody in the art world my work Art Is … [1983] – in which I mounted an empty gold frame on a float in Harlem’s African American Day Parade, and photographed people in the crowd holding frames around themselves – because it was all for that moment, for that space.
MG Did you think it wouldn’t be taken seriously as art because it was a community-oriented social performance project?
LG Yes. You have to understand that my performance Mlle Bourgeoise Noire [1980–83] predated the work of the Guerrilla Girls by five years. At the time, it was a total nonsequitur to ask a question like: ‘How many Black people are in this gallery?’ The racism and cultural self-satisfaction were appalling. The only Black artists at that time who could even be considered artists by the structure in place were using white aesthetics. Somebody like Faith Ringgold was just laughed at.
MG But now, even those works are acquiring new value in this trustee-led structure. ( … )