Artist Lorraine O’Grady has died at the age of ninety. Born in Boston in 1934, the American artist and writer was known for her conceptual use of performance and photography, including the influential Art is…(1983), where attendees to an African-American parade in Harlem were photographed posing with elaborate painting frames, and her performance persona Mademoiselle Bourgeois Noire.
Reviewing Both/And, her first retrospective in 2021, ArtReview wrote, ‘O’Grady is never completely satisfied with her own answers but instead frequently returns to her pieces to revise, reinterpret or make new critical interventions…. An artist whose oeuvre remains both vibrant and timely.’