Renaissance Society exhibition shines light on Northeast Ohio working class
Hyde Park Herald
by Aaron Gettinger
Two days before 50,000 United Automobile Workers (UAW) members went on strike against General Motors over pay and idled plants, photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier opened “The Last Cruze” at the Renaissance Society, shining a light on the toll GM’s decision to “un-allocate” a plant in Lordstown, Ohio, has taken on union workers and their families.
GM reneged on a promise to make the Chevrolet Cruze, a compact economy car, in Lordstown until 2021. Employees were offered a relocation package outside of Northeast Ohio, forcing workers to choose between continued work and being cut off from their community against losing their pensions and benefits.
Over 60 of Frazier’s photographs are on display in an exhibition designed to look like an automobile manufacturing line. “The Last Cruze” is also meant to recall a cathedral, taking advantage of the Renaissance Society gallery’s vaulted ceilings.
Frazier spent months documenting the workers in their homes and in the UAW Local 1112. Her practice takes cues from Great Depression-era social documentary work and conceptual photography of the 1960s and ’70s. Solveig Øvstebø and Karsten Lund with the Renaissance Society curated.
Frazier, who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, gave an hour-long discussion on “The Last Cruze” Saturday evening at the Cobb Lecture Hall, pointing out the human impact GM’s decision has caused, decrying cosmopolitan alienation from working people and lambasting the media’s depiction of the working class.
“I need you all to understand that up through yesterday, General Motors has literally been dislocating and moving people from Lordstown away from their family and loved ones — even on Labor Day,” Frazier said. “On Labor Day, I was receiving messages and phone calls from people reporting to their new locations.”
Courtesy of: Hyde Park Herald
