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o'grady

Lorraine O'Grady: "Mlle Bourgeois Noire goes to the New Museum" (1981)
Photograph: Coreen Simpson

Lorraine O’Grady (USA *1934)

Lorraine O’Grady is an artist and critic whose installations, performances and texts address issues of Diaspora, hybridity and black female subjectivity. She came to art late, making her first artworks in 1980 after working as a literary translator and rock critic. Ultimately her broad background contributes to a distanced and critical view of the art world and to a broadly interdisciplinary approach to making art.

Mlle Bourgeoise Noire is the persona of a raging beauty queen created by Lorraine O’Grady in 1980 to protest the still largely segregated New York art scene. Her race, class and gender critique not only deconstructs black bourgeois constructs of femininity and high art, but also lays bare the internalized repressions and external oppressions of blacks. Wearing a white gown and cape made of 360 white gloves, she beat herself with the “whip- that-made-plantations-move” and shouted out protest poems written for the occasion, with punch lines such as “BLACK ART MUST TAKE MORE RISKS!” and “NOW IS THE TIME FOR AN INVASION!”

The first time Mlle Bourgeoise Noire invaded an art opening was at Just Above Midtown Gallery, New York, the black avant-garde gallery, in June 1980. The invasion was her response to the Afro-American abstract art that she perceived as tame and well-behaved: “art with white gloves on”. Her next invasion was at the opening of “Persona,” a 1981 exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. The exhibit featured nine artists using personas in their work. Mlle Bourgeoise Noire called it “The Nine White Personae Show. ” When invited to give the outreach lectures to schoolkids for the show, she replied, “Let’s talk after the opening.” After her performance, she was dis-invited from doing outreach activities.

o'grady

Lorraine O'Grady: "Mlle Bourgeois Noire goes to the New Museum" (1981) in the exhibition.
image copyright Andreas Süß

The individual titles of the series Mlle Bourgeois Noire goes to the New Museum are:
Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire leaves the safety of home), Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire and her Master of Ceremonies enter the New Museum), Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire asks, "Won’t you help me lighten my heavy bouquet?"), Untitled (A skeptic inspects Mlle Bourgeoise Noire’s cape), Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire smiles, she smiles, she smiles), Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire continues her tournée), Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire removes the cape and puts on her gloves), Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire begins to concentrate), Untitled (Crowd watches Mlle Bourgeoise Noire whipping herself), Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire beats herself with the whip-that-made-plantations-move), Untitled (Crowd watches Mlle Bourgeoise Noire shouting her poem), Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire shouts out her poem), Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire leaves the New Museum), Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire celebrates with her friends).

 

In the Exhibition:

"Mlle Bourgeois Noire goes to the New Museum", 1981, Series of 14 Photographs.


Conference Programme

"Representing" Artist's Talk.


Links:

Alexander Gray Associates, New York
Lorraine O'Grady Website