This photograph was taken during American artist Lorraine O’Grady’s 1983 performance, Art Is…, at Harlem’s African-American Day Parade in September of 1983. The radical feminist artist’s work spans performance, photo and video installation and photomontage, exploring themes of gender, diaspora, identity and aesthetics. This particular piece was a response to a non-artist acquaintance’s claim that “avant-garde art doesn’t have anything to do with black people”. Determined to prove them wrong, O’Grady took her Dada-inspired piece to “the largest black space she could think of”, in the words of her gallery, Alexander Gray Associates. There, enlisted performers framed viewers in antique gold frames, rendering them and their surrounding art “in the spirit of celebration and inclusivity”.
