All of us who attended Simone Leigh’s ‘Loophole of Retreat’ 3-day convening at the 2022 Venice Biennale will likely remember—and have felt—her presence as a monumental statement of both Herstory and History. In conversation with Leigh, O’Grady remarked: “[…] We are no longer afraid to be lonely. We are no longer trying to connect; we are connected. We are no longer standing still, defending a position; we are moving forward. This movement is unstoppable.”

An active voice in the feminist art movement of 1970s New York, Lorraine O’Grady worked in performance, photo installation, video, and photomontage, exploring issues of gender, diaspora, identity, and aesthetics. She was best known for her performance works Mlle Bourgeoise Noire (1980–83) and Art Is…(1983), the latter a performance in Harlem’s African-American Day Parade in September 1983, in which O’Grady positioned a giant, antique-style gold frame atop a float so that, in the spirit of celebration and inclusivity, it framed everything it passed as art.

Born in New England in 1934 to Jamaican parents, she has also addressed minority cultural perspectives; for Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, a guerrilla performance located in the heart of New York’s downtown art scene, O’Grady dressed in a costume made of 180 pairs of white gloves, adopted a larger-than-life persona, and visited art galleries, critiquing the racial apartheid still prevalent in the mainstream art world.