The Museum of Modern Art
May 22, 2024
6:00–7:30 PM

In conjunction with the exhibition LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity, A Credo on Solidarity is an evening of creative responses to the credo artist-activist LaToya Ruby Frazier laid out in her newly published essay “Photograph by Faith Not by Sight: Valleys, Rivers and Spirit.” The program begins with a live reading of the essay by LaToya Ruby Frazier, followed by brief responses from poets Shea Cobb and Amber Hasan, artist and former steelworker Sandra Gould Ford, performance artists Liz Magic Laser and Wendy Osserman, artist Shala Miller, and scholar Imani Perry.

Presenters

LaToya Ruby Frazier was born in 1982 in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Her artistic practice spans a range of mediums, including photography, video, performance, installations, and books, and centers on the nexus of social justice, cultural change, and commentary on the American experience. In various interconnected bodies of work, Frazier uses collaborative storytelling with the people who appear in her artwork to address topics of industrialism, Rust Belt revitalization, environmental justice, access to healthcare, access to clean water, workers’ rights, human rights, family, and communal history. This builds on her commitment to the legacy of 1930s social documentary work and 1960s and ’70s conceptual photography that address urgent social and political issues of everyday life. Frazier is the recipient of many honors and awards including an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Edinboro University (2019), an honorary doctorate of fine arts from Pratt Institute (2017), and fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s MacArthur Genius Award (2015) and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2014).

Shea Phire Cobb lives and works in Flint, Michigan, where she was also born and raised. She is an artist, mother, author, musician, and founder of The Sister Tour, a platform that promotes female artistry. She began her artistic career by performing poetry during children’s summer programs and organizing poetry showcases in her community. Her books of poetry include Travels in My Car: Dedicated to the Writers Freedom (2018), Honey Tea and Hibiscus: Reflective Heart Poetry (2018), and Ruby in the Rough: A Dedication to LaToya Ruby Frazier (2020), which she co-authored with Amber Hasan. She studied communications at the University of Michigan–Flint and Mott Community College. In 2014, she began an ongoing collaboration with LaToya Ruby Frazier focused on the Flint water crisis. With Frazier and The Sister Tour, Cobb has traveled across the country telling the story of her community and the Flint water crisis. She has led programs at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where she also performed the original play Surviving Womanhood.

Sandra Gould Ford is an author, photographer, and former steelworker. A University of Pittsburgh graduate, Ford has created an illustrated international quarterly, produced writer conferences, and developed a writing program for the incarcerated. Her goals are to encourage, refresh, and enrich creative thinking, and to inspire, lift hearts and spirits, and promote awareness and humanity. Her work is influenced by Roger Rosenblatt’s four purposes for writing: to make suffering endurable, evil intelligible, justice desirable, and love possible.

Amber Hasan is a Muslim, mother, grandmother, wife, artist, herbalist, and community activist. She is also the cofounder of the woman-focused creative collective The Sister Tour and a member of the Earthwork Music Collective. Hasan has released two solo EPs, Loud Mouth Ghetto Girl and Regular Brown Girl, and the collaborative album Cedar Stage Surprise with Seth Bernard and Dan Rickabus. She has published three books of poetry: Drowning in My Own Spit, Ruby In The Rough (with Shea Cobb), and The Amerikkkan Nightmare (with Zahid Hasan). Hasan also wrote and produced the short film Good Intentions.

Liz Magic Laser is a multimedia video and performance artist from New York City. Her recent work explores the efficacy of new age techniques and psychological methods active in both corporate culture and political movements. Laser’s work has been shown at such venues as the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2023), Pioneer Works, Brooklyn (2023), ICA Boston (2023), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2022), Guggenheim Museum, New York (2021), and MUDAM the Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg (2021). Her work has been critically acclaimed in publications such as Texte zur Kunst, Artforum, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Frieze, and Art in America.

Wendy Osserman has studied many dance forms, including modern dance with Martha Graham, José Limòn, and Hanya Holm. She performed as a soloist with Valerie Bettis, Alice Condodina, Kei Takei, Frances Alenikoff, and the Hellenic Chorodrama, and she started the Wendy Osserman Dance Company (WODC) in 1976. Osserman has choreographed over 20 full-length pieces, as well as many shorter works in collaboration with outstanding dancers, visual artists, and composers. WODC has been presented in most NYC dance venues, including 92nd Street Y, Joe’s Pub, BAC, Dixon Place, Joyce SoHo, Symphony Space, La MaMa, and Theater for the New City.

Shala Miller, also known as Freddie June when she sings, was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, by two southerners named Al and Ruby. At around the age of 10 or 11, Miller discovered quietude, the kind you’re sort of pushed into, and then was fooled into thinking that this is where she should stay put. Since then, Miller has been trying to find her way out, and find her way into an understanding of herself and her history, using photography, video, writing, and singing as aids in this process.

Imani Perry is Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Her book South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation won the 2022 National Book Award for nonfiction. Perry is the author of seven other books, including Breathe: A Letter to My Sons, Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem. As a cultural critic, Perry has written for publications including Harpers, the Atlantic, and the New York Times Magazine. In 2021, her profile of Gayl Jones was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. In 2023, Perry was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She lives in Philadelphia and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Courtesy of: The Museum of Modern Art