Lorraine O'Grady's First Retrospective at Brooklyn Museum Challenges Binaries Through Visual Literature

Lorraine O'Grady: Both/And marks the pioneering artist's first retrospective at age eighty-six, curated by Catherine Morris and Aruna D'Souza at the Brooklyn Museum through July 18. The exhibition features twelve major works spanning her career, including her 1981 performance as Mlle Bourgeoise Noire at the New Museum's Persona exhibition, where she critiqued racial exclusion in art institutions. O'Grady's practice centers on destabilizing binaries through diptychs and visual literature, exemplified by Cutting Out the New York Times (1977/2017), where she created collages from newspaper clippings that she later edited into diptych haiku. Another key work, Rivers, First Draft, or The Woman in Red (1982/2015), documents a Central Park performance using photographic narratives with color-coded costumes to chart personal and artistic journeys. The exhibition occupies the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and extends into other museum floors, with Miscegenated Family Album (1980/1994) interspersed in the Ancient Egyptian collection to dialogue with de-Africanized heritage. O'Grady's latest persona, Announcement of a New Persona (Performances to Come!) (2020), features medieval armor and Global South headdresses, reflecting her ongoing revisions and interventions. The retrospective underscores her critique of artworld hierarchies and her archival diligence as a Black woman artist, with works that remain vibrantly relevant decades after their creation.