A Monument for Braddock
LaToya Ruby Frazier works in photography, video, and performance to build visual archives that address industrialism, rustbelt revitalization, environmental justice, healthcare inquety, and family and communal history.
Artist BioA Monument for Braddock will be built on the lot where LaToya Frazier’s childhood home once stood in her hometown of Braddock, PA, a steel-mill town located five miles outside Pittsburgh. The artist’s objective is to create a new kind of landmark in response to the current demolition and gentrification that has uprooted and erased the community’s history. A Monument for Braddock will be a three-story brick building—a slightly altered version of Frazier’s childhood home that was demolished in 2004. It will house shrines, statues and photographic archives documenting the lives of the current long-standing residents born and raised in Braddock.
LaToya Ruby Frazier
Chicago, IL
LaToya Ruby Frazier was born and raised in Braddock, PA. She earned a BFA from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2004, and an MFA from Syracuse University in 2007. She completed the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in 2011. Her work has been shown in numerous museums and galleries, including the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2012 Whitney Biennial; PS1 MoMA’s 2010 survey, Greater New York; the New Museum of Contemporary Art’s 2009 triennial, Younger Than Jesus; and other major shows at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Museum of the City of New York, and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Her first solo museum show, Mother May I, was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in 2010. Current solo projects include A Haunted Capital at the Brooklyn Museum and Witness at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston. Frazier is Associate Curator for the Mason Gross Galleries at Rutgers University, where she has also taught photography in the Mason Gross School of the Arts. In 2012, she was appointed critic in photography at Yale University.