
Miscegenated Family Album
<p>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. <em>Miscegenated Family Album</em> 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.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1980
- 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.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Lorraine O'Grady
Artist

Photography
Lorraine O'Grady was an American artist, writer, translator, and critic. Working in conceptual art and performance art that integrates photo and video installation, she explored the cultural construction of identity – particularly that of Black female subjectivity – as shaped by the experience of diaspora and hybridity. O'Grady studied at Wellesley College and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop before becoming an artist at the age of 45. Regarding the purpose of art, O'Grady said in 2016: "I think art's first goal is to remind us that we are human, whatever that is. I suppose the politics in my art could be to remind us that we are all human."
Full artist profile →More
More by Lorraine O'Grady
Miscegenated Family Album (Worldly Princesses), L: Nefertiti’s daughter, Merytaten; R: Devonia’s daughter, Kimberley
1980 · Silver dye bleach prints, printed 2008
Miscegenated Family Album (Ceremonial Occasions I), L: Devonia as Matron of Honor; R: Nefertiti performing a lustration
1980 · Silver dye bleach prints, printed 2008
Untitled (Mlle Bourgeoise Noire)
1980 · Fourteen gelatin silver prints, printed 2014
Miscegenated Family Album (Motherhood), L: Nefertiti; R: Devonia reading to Candace and Edward, Jr.
1980 · Silver dye bleach prints, printed 2008
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Lorraine O'Grady
- Year
- 1980
- 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.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1980-141517
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified



