Boston Globe, 2024. Murray Whyte reviews O’Grady’s “Both/And” at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College. Whyte notes the multifaceted nature of O’grady with a life that includes a stint at the US Department of Labor, writing rock criticism, and teaching. All of these positions converged into her art making process, beginning with the performance “Rivers, First Draft.”
Lorraine O’Grady Has Always Been A Rebel—In this conversation for The New Yorker, Doreen St. Felix and O’Grady discuss the artist’s nonconformist attitudes which she cultivated in childhood, rebelling from a middle class, Black immigrant family. This spirit of rebellion foregrounded O’Grady’s interest in the avant-garde and her penchant for conceptualism.
At 86, Lorraine O’Grady is experiencing what she calls her “first big break” with the Brooklyn Museum’s retrospective Both/And. For more than four decades, O’Grady has forged a singular path in performance, collage, and critical writing—work that probes identity, inclusion, and the limits of art history. In conversation with Ben Davis, she reflects on her Boston upbringing, her influence on younger artists, and the unexpected moment when a Biden administration post-election ad brought her work into viral circulation.
Kate Guadagnino sits down with O’Grady to learn about her day-to-day as a concept-based artist. She speaks honestly about her process of making art by returning to old projects with fresh eyes, sometimes years later, while also including more personal details like her favorite films and her life at Westbeth. The artist notes that “having come to art later in life, [...] I’m out there to make the best possible work and as close to a masterpiece as I can. [...] What I’m trying to do is get as much of myself expressed as possible because there is so little out there that allows for an understanding of the fullness of the Black mind or soul.”
Jarrett Earnest speaks with Lorraine O’Grady as part of a series of artists who are also writers, for David Zwirner’s podcast. They discuss the artist’s “both/and” approach that is crucial to her retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, and what she learned from her exhibition.
Artbook’s listing for “Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And”, the accompanying book to O’Grady’s retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum in 2021. The book surveys O’Grady’s work spanning over four decades of her major works and showcases, “Announcement”, her new persona and performance piece.
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.
Alexandra M. Thomas affirms the range of O’Grady’s literature upon the release of her collected essays and interviews entitled Writing in Space, making clear the wisdom in her scholarship, much of which was written before she was (recognized as) a practicing artist.