Lorraine O’Grady’s Paris exhibition traces her visionary career, affirming her Black feminist perspective and rejection of binaries. Featuring iconic series like Rivers, First Draft, Body is the Ground of My Experience, and Announcement of a New Persona, it reveals her inventive self-mythology and enduring influence on contemporary art and identity.
Lorraine O’Grady, a pioneering African-American conceptual artist, is celebrated in her first French solo exhibition at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery. Spanning four decades, the show features iconic works like Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, Rivers, First Draft, and The Knight series, revealing her profound engagement with identity, hybridity, and cultural critique.
In Le Monde, Philippe Dagen reflects on Lorraine O’Grady’s first solo exhibition in Paris, but also the last one she prepared herself, as she passed last December, 2024. Renowned as Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, O’Grady’s fearless performances and surrealist-infused works expose colonial contradictions and gendered power, cementing her legacy as a transformative voice in contemporary art.
The Bay State Banner, 2024. Susan Saccocia reviews O’Grady’s “Both/And” at the Davis Museum at O’Grady’s alma mater, Wellesley College. Saccocia describes several of O’Grady’s most prominent works on display in the exhibit and highlights how the show weaves the narrative of O’Grady’s lustrous and expansive career.
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.
Published by Alexander Gray Associates, the catalogue of Rivers, First Draft includes forty-eight images of the 1982 performance O’Grady created for the public art program, “Art Across the Park.” The catalogue provides an in-depth look at O’Grady's work, featuring visual documentation of her performance along with writings by the artist providing insight into her creative process and art practice.