At MoMA, LaToya Ruby Frazier Updates American Iconography

There’s nothing more American than the idioms capturing the pride of hard work and individuality, the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and “burning the midnight oil” slogans  that drape us in the archetype of the solo pioneer. Our country’s ethos often feels like a byproduct of the ad-man age, teeming with nostalgia for a time when everything was American-made, when labor was synonymous with working-class pride rather than exploitation. In “Monuments of Solidarity,” LaToya Ruby Frazier’s first museum survey, on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York through September 7, we see the artist fashion new grammars of American identity, ones that are being formulated now, in the postindustrial boom.

Since the early 2000s, Frazier has enlisted photography to transform everyday people and community organizers into statuesque figures. Her tender portraitsevoke a dedication to world-building that centers around a love ethic. Most importantly, seeing Frazier’s expansive artworks in the near collapse of an empire calls attention to the fallacies of American hubris: that our country may never tremble, or more arrogantly put, that a single leader might keep us afloat.

It’s bittersweet to acknowledge that the best art comes from moments of indelible pain. That is how we are introduced to Frazier’s work: at the start of the exhibition, we meet a teenage Frazier who trains the camera on herself, and on the matriarchs in her family. She orients our gaze towards three generations of women all experiencing the repercussions of poverty and ecological contamination in the industrial town of Braddock, Pennsylvania. Images and videos from her illustrious series, “The Notion of Family”—which she worked on for more than a decade between 2001 and 2014—are suspended in the air or glittered along the lavender walls that frame the predictable gentleness of feminine youth against the harsh realities of social, economic, and environmental dispositions. The black-and-white gelatin silver prints are presented on a modest scale that strikes the perfect balance between intimacy and immediacy. In Momme (2008), a petite double portrait of Frazier and her mother, Cynthia, their faces eclipse one another, aligning in such a way that they appear as one person. Self Portrait (United States Steel), 2010, pairs a color video diptych of Frazier nude from the waist up with reels of smoke from a Braddock factory looming in the air. Here, we witness the symbiotic relationship between her vulnerable body and our sickly landscape, both suffering from the chemical ills of capitalism. “The Notion of Family” is grounded in metaphors of decay, mirrors, and lineage, weaving autobiography with public investigation, a combination that remains consistent throughout her practice.

Seeing Frazier’s seminal series unfold Seeing her magnum opus of a series unfold throughout these first galleries helps solidify the importance of her legacy right away. It’s always a pleasure revisiting the catalyst that bore the beloved artist-activist, as it is an honor to glide throughout the exhibition and see how her work grew more refined in the series that follow.

Frazier has long designed intricate apparatuses for her photographs, with a keen eye for spatial design that mimics the way her pictures explore both people and their environments. The exhibition design comes through strongly in this survey, assigning each series a specific Pantone wall color to match its temperament. Gray walls affirm Frazier’s sophisticated critique, framing her performance piece LaToya Ruby Frazier Takes On Levi’s (2010). In that 6-minute video she echoes Pope.L’s performative street crawls to grate her Levi’s Canadian Tuxedo against pavement, a gesture dissecting various Levi’s ads that glorify working-class communities despite being a big corporation that depletes resources from workers to funnel wealth to the top. A soothing shade of sage surrounds “Flint Is Family in Three Acts” (2016–2019), in which two bedroom mirrors in Self-Portrait with Shea and Her Daughter Zion in the Bedroom Mirror, Newton, Mississippi (2017–19) thread together a trio of Black women affected by systematic and ecological disasters. The earth tone charts pathways between Braddock and Flint, Michigan, regions bound too by the Monongahela River. Frazier embeds Flint residents in a withering green, recalling a verdant environment turned feeble due to the effects of environmental racism. A muted ochre converts rooms dedicated to Baltimore-based community workers and labor activist Dolores Huerta into devotional chapels. And a deep violet orbits artworks from “On the Making of Steel Genesis: Sandra Gould Ford” (1985–2017), which pairs photographs by Frazier and fellow artist Ford, marking yet another example of her inclusive practice. Gradients of celestial colors from lapis to ruby illuminate Frazier’s cyanotypes and Ford’s archival inkjet prints while a voiceover—Ford’s voice—encompasses the room. By immersing her viewers in color and sound, Frazier foregrounds feeling to alchemize empathy for everyone caught in the center of America-manufactured destruction.

“Monuments of Solidarity” lovingly commemorates everyday people and community leaders, most notably Black women, who have labored at the heart of liberation fronts while harboring the aches of deconstruction, as seen in artworks like “More Than Conquerors: A Monument for Community Health Workers of Baltimore, Maryland” (2021–22). Here, Frazier displays images of health care workers alongside their stories of working during Covid-19 on IV poles, converting photographs into sculptures with placards. Yes, stamina is required to indulge in every person’s story, but reading thoroughly ensures we aren’t macro-dosing amnesia when it comes to acknowledging the real crusaders of our times. In The Last Cruze (2019), Frazier imposes a similar format on a fiery floating hexagonal structure that undulates along its length, recalling an assembly line. Here, the conceptual documentarian catalogs the stories of former auto factory workers, including a field of diverse faces: her photos and testimonials include white people, looking beyond race to emphasize class solidarity.

Though Frazier is a rigorous chronicler of American landscapes, her work extends beyond photography to craft emotive environments that engulf her subjects—people and places that bear the risk of erasure and neglect. Together, these series form grammar of cultural identity emphasizes collectivity: not only wistful notions of familial togetherness, but also the power of organizing, with labor unions a frequent subject. Thankfully, Frazier’s is a necessary update to the iconography of America.