“LaToya Ruby Frazier: Artist as Advocate” Whitewall Magazine interview
Portrait by Steve Benisty
Whitewall Magazine
April 27, 2018
by Katy Donoghue
LaToya Ruby Frazier: Artist as Advocate
LaToya Ruby Frazier is an advocate. Through her work—in photography, video, and the written word—she’s made visible the untold stories of her hometown devastated by the loss of the steel industry; a family in Flint, Michigan, affected by the water crisis; former miners of Le Grand-Hornu in Belgium; and her own family.
She realized the potential of her artmaking when she saw Gordon Parks’s photograph American Gothic for the first time. Realizing that she could craft social commentary in her practice was a revelation. That pursuit earned her a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2015; exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, and the ICA in Boston; and several shows in Europe.
Early this year, she opened her first show in New York since 2013. Taking over three floors of Gavin Brown’s enterprise in Harlem were three bodies of work: “The Notion of Family” (2001–2014), “A Pilgrimage to Noah Purifoy’s Desert Art Museum” (2016–2017), and “Flint Is Family” (2016–2017).
Whitewall spoke with Frazier about the power and beauty in honoring other people’s humanity.
Courtesy of: Whitewall
