Lorraine O'Grady
American, 1934-2024
Miscegenated Family Album
INV-1933
Lorraine O'Grady
American, 1934-20241980/94
Miscegenated Family Album
Lorraine O'Grady American, 1934-2024 →photographphotography
Date
1980/94
Medium
Sixteen silver dye bleach print diptychs, framed
Dimensions
Each: 67.3 × 95.3 cm (26 1/2 × 37 9/16 in.); 67.4 × 95.3 cm (26 1/2 × 37 1/2 in.); Each frame: 69.3 × 97 × 3.9 cm (27 1/4 × 38 3/16 × 1 1/2 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Through prior bequest of Marguerita S. Ritman
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.
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