LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity

Edited by Roxana Marcoci
With contributions by Emilie Boone, Carson Chan, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Oluremi C. Onabanjo, and Delphine Sims

For more than two decades, the artist-activist LaToya Ruby Frazier has used photography, text, moving images, and performance to revive and preserve forgotten narratives of labor, gender, and race in the postindustrial era.

Frazier has cultivated a practice that builds on the legacy of the social documentary tradition of the 1930s, the photo-conceptual forays of the 1960s and 1970s, and the work of socially conscious writers like Upton Sinclair, James Baldwin, and bell hooks.


Monuments of Solidarity celebrates the creativity and collaboration that persist in the face of industrialization and deindustrialization, racial and environmental injustice, gender disparities, unequal access to health care and clean water, and the erosion or denial of fundamental human rights. A form of Black feminist world-building, Frazier’s nontraditional “monuments” demand recognition of the crucial role that women and people of color have played, and continue to play, in histories of labor and the working class. Published in conjunction with the first comprehensive museum survey dedicated to the artist, LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity presents the full range of her practice and includes both rarely seen and brand-new bodies of work. An illuminating overview essay by the exhibition’s curator, Roxana Marcoci, is accompanied by a manifesto by the artist and a suite of focused essays by other curators and scholars.

Size: 9.5w x 12″h
Year of Design: 2024
Pages: 256
Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art
Author: Roxana Marcoci
ISBN: 978-1633451599

Purchase Book

Courtesy of: MoMA Design Store

Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America

Originally conceived by Okwui Enwezor
Curatorial Advisors: Naomi Beckwith, Massimiliano Gioni, Glenn Ligon, and Mark Nash

A timely and urgent exploration into the ways artists have grappled with race and grief in modern America, conceived by the great curator Okwui Enwezor

Featuring works by more than 30 artists and writings by leading scholars and art historians, this book — and its accompanying exhibition, both conceived by the late, legendary curator Okwui Enwezor — gives voice to artists addressing concepts of mourning, commemoration, and loss and considers their engagement with the social movements, from Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter, that black grief has galvanized.

Artists included: Terry Adkins, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kevin Beasley, Dawoud Bey, Mark Bradford, Garrett Bradley, Melvin Edwards, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Charles Gaines, Theaster Gates, Ellen Gallagher, Arthur Jafa, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Rashid Johnson, Jennie C. Jones, Kahlil Joseph, Deana Lawson, Simone Leigh, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Okwui Okpokwasili, Adam Pendleton, Julia Phillips, Howardena Pindell, Cameron Rowland, Lorna Simpson, Sable Elyse Smith, Tyshawn Sorey, Diamond Stingily, Henry Taylor, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, Nari Ward, Carrie Mae Weems, and Jack Whitten.

Essays by Elizabeth Alexander, Naomi Beckwith, Judith Butler, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Massimiliano Gioni, Saidiya Hartman, Juliet Hooker, Glenn Ligon, Mark Nash, Claudia Rankine, and Christina Sharpe.

Author
Okwui Enwezor (1963–2019) was a curator, writer, and art critic.

Curatorial Advisors
Naomi Beckwith is Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Massimiliano Gioni is Edlis Neeson Artistic Director of the New Museum.

Glenn Ligon is an artist, writer, and curator.

Mark Nash is Professor of Digital Arts and New Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Format: Hardback
Size: 290 x 250 mm (11 3/8 x 9 7/8 in)
Pages: 264 pp
Illustrations: 175 illustrations
ISBN: 9781838661298

Purchase Book

Courtesy of: Phaidon

“LaToya Ruby Frazier: The Last Cruze”

The Renaissance Society
at The University of Chicago

The Renaissance Society is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of The Last Cruze, a substantial book that expands upon LaToya Ruby Frazier’s 2019 solo exhibition at the museum. Available to order, this publication features Frazier’s extensive body of work that centers on the autoworkers at the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio. Through photographs and interviews, Frazier records the devastating effects on the workers’ families and their community after GM “unallocated” the plant, which soon led to its closure.

The developments in Lordstown brought widespread attention to the small Rust Belt town, which emerged as a political flashpoint. As the final days of production at GM Lordstown approached in 2019, the employees were faced with the difficult decision to either transfer to plants in other parts of the country or lose their pensions and benefits. For many, this meant uprooting or dividing their family, moving away from aging parents, or leaving behind their support networks. During this long period of upheaval, Frazier spent part of every week in Lordstown with the workers and their families. Photographing them and letting them tell their own stories, she conveys their experiences of these events, the disruption to their lives, and the efforts of the local union, United Auto Workers Local 1112, on behalf of its members.

Front and back covers of LaToya Ruby Frazier: The Last Cruze, 2020.
Design: David Khan-Giordano. Photo: Useful Art Services.


For Frazier, this publication is a vital part of The Last Cruze, extending the dialogue around the work, offering another platform for the workers’ voices, and inviting new reflections by a number of leading scholars and thinkers. It includes the exhibition’s more than sixty black-and-white photographs and documentation of the immersive installation at the Renaissance Society. Just as vitally, the book includes five in-depth discussions, each led by Frazier: dialogues with union leaders from UAW Local 1112 and members of its Women’s Committee, and conversations with economic geographer David Harvey; Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage; and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Julia Reichert and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. Providing greater context, the book also includes new art-historical essays by Coco Fusco, Benjamin J. Young, and exhibition co-curators Karsten Lund and Solveig Øvstebø, as well as a detailed timeline compiled by Frazier and UAW members tracking the history of unionism in the US, from the 1930s onward. The volume closes with a reflection by Werner Lange, a sociologist who staged a 45-day roadside vigil in solidarity.

While the GM plant in Lordstown has officially closed and its workers and their families have largely had to relocate, it’s clear this story is hardly over. The ripple effects of the closure are only starting to be seen. And in the year since The Last Cruze was first exhibited in Chicago, the COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the economy and underlined just how precarious things are, and continue to be, for so many people. The importance of advocating for workers, the need for good healthcare, the blessings of community, and the power of collective action are now more palpable than ever. Building on the original exhibition and gathering LaToya Ruby Frazier’s ongoing dialogues around these topics, this book presents The Last Cruze in an expanded form, filled with voices from Lordstown and beyond.

Click here to order

LaToya Ruby Frazier: The Last Cruze
392 pages / 87 color plates, 124 halftones
Hardcover, 12 x 9 inches
Edited by LaToya Ruby Frazier, Karsten Lund, and Solveig Øvstebø.
Designed by David Khan-Giordano.

With contributions by Pamela Brown, Sherrod Brown, Coco Fusco, LaToya Ruby Frazier, David Green, David Harvey, Werner Lange, Karsten Lund, Marilyn Moore, Lynn Nottage, Solveig Øvstebø, Julia Reichert, Rick Smith, Frances Turnage, and Benjamin J. Young.

LaToya Ruby Frazier: The Last Cruze is supported by Mirja and Ted Haffner, The Hartfield Foundation, The David C. & Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation, Barbara Bluhm-Kaul and Don Kaul, and Mary Frances Budig and John Hass. Publication supported by Conor O’Neil / Chauncey & Marion Deering McCormick Foundation.

All Renaissance Society publications are made possible by The Mansueto Foundation Publications Program.

Read more…

Courtesy of: The Renaissance Society