Lorraine O’grady is an artist whose work often portrays black females in order to reveal the place and role they have had in modern history. O’grady shares that she believes that art is meant to remind us that we are humans and that the politics in her art certainly can remind a person of this. At the Brooklyn Museum a gown that O’Grady had worn during a performance. The performance was called, Mile Bourgeoise Noire (Miss Black Middle Class.) This performance was meant to shock the art world which O’grady was unhappy with due to its prevalent apartheid of black artists. The gown was compromised of 180 gloves she had collected from thrift stores. The piece was meant to display her intolerance for black artists that were being forced to create art that please white curators. The gloves which made the gown represent “art with white gloves on.” While she recited poems of protest O’grady whipped herself on-hundred times in order to depict “the slavery that made plantations move.”
