PS1 newspaper interview, 2008
Abbreviated version of a WPS1 radio chat with curator Connie Butler. Published in the P.S.1 Newspaper Special Edition for “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” Winter/Spring, 2008, P.S.1–MOMA, Long Island City, NY.
Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline
175
WPS1 chat with Connie Butler, 2008
Recorded by Art Radio WPS1, available online at clocktower.org — Full transcript of a 45-minute conversation between Lorraine O’Grady and curator Connie Butler in WPS1 Art Radio’s broadcast studios two weeks before the WACK! opening at PS1–MOMA, Long Island City, NY.
Email Q & A with Courtney Baker, 1998
Unpublished exchange — The most comprehensive and focused interview of O’Grady to date, this Q & A by a Duke University doctoral candidate benefited from the slowness of the email format, the African American feminist scholar’s deep familiarity with O’Grady’s work, and their personal friendship.
art-world racism unpublished hybridity performance art Courntey Baker Jean-Michel Basquiat 1998 the Black and White Show historiography Just Above Midtown art market black avant-garde black women artists Rivers First Draft black writers autobiography erasure/invisibility Mlle Bourgeoise Noire race and class Art Is... Ancient Egypt black female subjectivity Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline sibling rivalry
Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, 1997
Art Journal, College Art Association — In this article for Art Journal, Winter 1997, the special issue on performance edited by Martha Wilson, O’Grady focuses first on Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, then discusses its relationship to Miscegenated Family Album, alluding to the advantages and disadvantages of the move from performance to photo installation.
Interview by Theo Davis, 1996
In Sojourner: The Women's Forum, November 1996 — Conducted in Cambridge during O’Grady’s one-year residency at the Bunting Institute at Harvard, the interview may have been affected by what she’d felt as adverse treatment there of her diptych The Clearing.
black female subjectivity Gayatri Spivak Bunting Institute art-world racism autobiography Lucy Lippard political art performance art Mlle Bourgeoise Noire 1996 Art Is... erasure/invisibility Miscegenated Family album sex and sexuality Surrealism Ancient Egypt The Clearing sibling rivalry Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Girls Latin School Olympia's Maid religion and spirituality
Interview by Laura Cottingham, 1995
Hatch-Billops Collection, Artists and Influence 1996, vol. 15 — In-depth interview done for the excellent Artist and Influence series produced by Camille Billops and James Hatch for their archive of African American visual and theatre arts.
Mlle Bourgeoise Noire nature vs culture Miscegenated Family album the Caribbean rock criticism race and class The Clearing sex and sexuality Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Ancient Egypt black female subjectivity Olympia's Maid sibling rivalry white feminism Judith Wilson the Black and White Show Lucy Lippard tokenism Just Above Midtown performance art religion and spirituality black avant-garde Adrian Piper autobiography 1995
Thoughts on Diaspora and Hybridity, 1994
Unpublished lecture, Wellesley College — Written shortly after the “Postscript” to “Olympia’s Maid,” this lecture delivered to the Wellesley Round Table, a faculty symposium on Miscegenated Family Album, takes a retrospective look at O’Grady’s earlier life and work through the prism of cultural theory.
Ancient Egypt Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline sibling rivalry Olympia's Maid Wellesley College Gayatri Spivak artistic process post-modernism black female subjectivity performance art 1994 hybridity historiography The Dual Soul nature vs culture autobiography the Caribbean Miscegenated Family album race and class diaspora
Interview by Linda Montano, 1986
Unedited transcript for Performance Artists Talking in the Eighties — Montano’s questions on “ritual” cast interesting light on the connection between O’Grady’s early life and her performances. The unedited transcript of the interview contains answers in greater depth on Mlle Bourgeoise Noire and Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline.
Performance Statement #3, 1983
Unpublished statement, for Tony Whitfield — A letter to Tony Whitfield in preparation for Just Above Midtown’s Afro- Pop catalogue interview is O’Grady’s most self-conscious to that point. Experiencing a lack of clear precedents for her work, in it she attempts to theorize her relationship to performance art and the paucity of role models, and to face the question of the audience for black avant-garde art.
First Of The Month, 2023
First of the Month, 2023. This Met is Mine — In his thoughtful essay, Ben Khadim DeMott details his first encounter with O’Grady’s Miscegenated Family Album at the Booth collection at the University of Chicago which unearthed his own familial memories of trips to Met and viewing the Ancient Egyptian exhibit. Through research DeMott finds that “(Cross Generational) L: Nefertiti, the last image; R: Devonia\’s youngest Daughter, Kimberley,” is a part of the larger performance piece, “Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline.” He explores the cathartic potential of art as shown in O’Gradys works which serve first as a balm not an analytic correction of history.
Aware, 2022
For Aware’s index of worm artists, Stephanie Sparling Williams writes on O’Grady’s unique path to becoming an artist from US intelligence analyst, teacher, translator, and critic to avant-garde performances and photo installations.
diptych 2021 Miscegenated Family album Stephanie Sparling Williams Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Mademoiselle Bourgeoise Noire Boston Body is the Ground of My Experience Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution Cutting Out The New York Times Wellesley College Studies for Flowers of Evil and Good the Black and White Show both/and Rivers First Draft Brooklyn Museum
Frieze, 2022
Curator and critic Jacopo Crivelli Visconti names Miscegenated Family Album, on view at Frieze New York in 2022, as “nothing less than one of the masterpieces of the 20th Century.”
Collector Daily, 2021
Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And @Brooklyn Museum—Loring Knoblauch provides a comprehensive review of O’Grady’s Both/And retrospective offering a detailed listing of the artworks displayed, and the mapping of the show. Looking closely at each component presented at the Brooklyn Museum, Knoblauch finds that what emerges is the importance of conceptualism and idea-driven practices to O’Grady’s work.
Conceptualism Art Is... both/and Miscegenated Family album Brooklyn Museum black female subjectivity The Fir-Palm 2021 Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Aruna d’Souza Harlem Catherine Morris hybridity Body is the Ground of My Experience the knight Just Above Midtown black women artists Rivers First Draft the Caribbean diptych The Strange Taxi photo-installation Egypt Mlle Bourgeoise Noire
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.
race and class Judy Chicago Art Is... Ancient Egypt Cutting Out CONY Miscegenated Family album Cutting Out The New York Times The Clearing 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
Observer, 2021
Anni Irish offers an overview of O’Grady’s art practice in consideration of her retrospective, Both/And, focusing on key conceptual stakes, such as the artist’s interest in language as form.
other media Rolling Stone the Black and White Show becoming an artist Announcement of a New Persona (Performances to Come!) Just Above Midtown erasure/invisibility 2021 Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Cutting Out The New York Times Cutting Out CONYT Art Is... Wellesley College art institutions Miscegenated Family album Conceptualism School of Visual Arts Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Jamaica cat o’nine tails art-world racism both/and Caribbean retrospective performance art Brooklyn Museum interdisciplinary The Village Voice hybridity
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.
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 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
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.
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 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
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.
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 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
Brooklyn Museum, 2010
Object of the Month, August 2010: Miscegenated Family Album — Patrick Amsellem, Associate Curator of Photography, blogs a tribute to Miscegenated Family Album. In an analysis of the work’s intellectual and emotional success at the museum, Amsellem writes that MFA “immediately became a favorite."
Johanna Burton, 2008
Miscegenated Family Album, Artforum Magazine — In Artforum's first review of an O'Grady solo exhibit, Burton sensitively parses the "uneasy symmetry" of the Miscegenated Family Album installation at Alexander Gray Associates, NY.
Holland Cotter, 2008
Miscegenated Family Album, at Alexander Gray Associates, NY — The first New York Times review of a solo show by O’Grady. Lead review in the “Art in Review” section, with a photo of “Sisters I.”
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.
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 Ancient Egypt writing in space
LIVE performance 5, 1980/81
“Dialogues,” Just Above Midtown Gallery — Patricia S. Jones discusses a downtown gallery performance series at Just Above Midtown, NYC, Oct 1980 in a late 70s-early 80s annual journal. Article makes special note of O’Grady’s first performance of Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline.