Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, IL
As an artist of African, Caribbean, and Irish descent, Lorraine O’Grady has mainly focused on representations of black female subjectivity, often through the lens of family, literary, and art-historical narratives. Her work combats the elimination of difference across a spectrum of social concerns, while championing the positive values of hybridization. Miscegenated Family Album is a series of diptychs, each containing an image of the ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti paired with a corresponding image of the artist’s deceased sister, Devonia Evangeline O’Grady Allen, or members of their respective families. The physical resemblances between the individuals within any given diptych are sometimes startling. Both families, in fact, reflect the consequences of generations of cross-cultural exchange and interracial marriage.
