LaToya Ruby Frazier

American, Born 1982

BiographyAn internationally recognized interdisciplinary artist and activist, LaToya Ruby Frazier (b. 1982) received her BFA from the University of Pennsylvania (2004) and her MFA in Photography from Syracuse University (2007). Frazier uses photography, video, and performance to document social and racial inequality and economic decline in post-industrial rustbelt communities, as embodied by her first photographic essay, The Notion of Family (2014) of her hometown Braddock, Pennsylvania. Her approach that uses the camera as a tool of social justice belongs to the evolving tradition of documentary photography that has its roots in the Harlem images of Gordon Park and Roy DeCarava as well as the Depression-era FSA photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans who captured the effects of the Great Depression and its aftermath. In this unflinching and intimate series that chronicles the impact of the manufacturing industry’s decline upon the lives of her own family and on communities across the country, Frazier pushes forward this socially-conscious tradition by bringing together self-portraiture with social narrative.

Frazier’s work can be found in a growing number of collections including the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh; CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques), Paris; Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City; Seattle Art Museum; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta; and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among others.

Frazier has also been widely recognized through numerous fellowships and awards including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius’ Fellows Award (2015), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2014), and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2011). Her work is the subject of the exhibition LaToya Ruby Frazier: Flint is Family, which is on view at The Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University, New Orleans through December 14, 2019. Over 25 solo presentations of her work have been held since 2009, including at Musée d’art Moderne, Luxembourg; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Seattle Art Museum; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Musée des Arts Contemporains, Grand-Hornu, Belgium; and Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, France. Frazier’s work was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial and the 2011 Venice Biennale as well as numerous group exhibitions including The Generational: Younger Than Jesus (2009) at the New Museum, New York and Greater New York (2010) at MoMA PS1, New York.

Currently, Frazier is an Associate Professor of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is represented by Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York/Rome.

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