GRIT Collective Critiques Fia Backström's Queens Museum Exhibition as Extractive

The GRIT collective, representing artists from economically disadvantaged rural communities, primarily West Virginia, has issued a sharp critique of Fia Backström's exhibition 'The Great Society' at the Queens Museum. The collective, including Paige Phillips, Jenny Fine, Julie Rae Powers, Ali Printz, and Amy Ritter, argues the show recklessly extracts trauma from Appalachia for cultural capital. They challenge a Hyperallergic article by Lauren O’Neill-Butler that praised Backström's work as a model for representing impoverished communities. The exhibition focuses on Buffalo Creek, site of a 1972 extractive disaster, and creates a montage of suffering through inverted photographs, videos like 'Mud Wave,' and a community quilt made with local participants who were not compensated. Backström, a European artist with limited engagement in West Virginia, is positioned by the museum and critic as an authority, which the collective says flattens the region's complexity into a singular narrative of misery. The GRIT collective engaged in months of dialogue with the Queens Museum and Backström, including an in-person meeting last December, but received no public acknowledgment of harm. They contend the exhibition's aesthetic choices—such as avoiding human figures and rendering landscapes ghostly—reinforce stereotypes and ignore Appalachian pride, humor, and community ties. The collective calls for Appalachians to have space in cultural institutions to tell their own stories.