Abstract
In the first major museum exhibition dedicated to LaToya Ruby Frazier in the United States (US), this catalogue captures the decades of work by the artist-activist. The publication outlines 10 collections from Frazier showcased at the Museum of Modern Art, or the MoMA (displayed May to September 2024). Marcoci edited 279 photos, often portraits of working-class Americans, and a mixture of essays, moving images, and poetry to lay out Frazier’s Monuments of Solidarity. Frazier used monuments to describe the histories of working-class people, often women and people of color, who were historically underrepresented and underserved, versus the traditional stone and marble sculptures dedicated to rich institutions and capitalists. In doing so, the voices, faces, and stories of people faced with economic and environmental injustice at work and in their communities can be heard, seen, and remembered.
Frazier’s first work, “The Notion of Family,” based on her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, is a monument to Black women and tells the story of pollution from manufacturing and economic loss from deindustrialization in her community. “Flint is Family in Three Acts” takes us to Flint, Michigan, as we see people faced with one of the worst instances of environmental racism in US history. As a consequence of government cost-savings, the residents of Flint were exposed to lead in their drinking water. Frazier frames incredible acts of selfless love and solidarity from grassroot initiatives, for example, Moses West, an army veteran who installed an atmospheric water generator for the people. “The Last Cruze,” a monument to workers, presented on an aluminum structure to mimic an assembly line, recorded a closure of a Chevrolet Cruze manufacturing plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and the subsequent announcement to lay off nearly 15,000 workers. This, along with other monuments, illustrates the raw emotions of Americans faced with socioeconomic and political realities.
Frazier’s latest two works are presented, first with “More than Conquerors: A Monument for Community Health Workers of Baltimore, Maryland, 2021–2022.” The monument was installed with 18 panels of photographs and narratives on nine poles set 6 feet apart, in respect to the social distancing guidelines from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Community Health Workers (CHWs) were the focus of this monument and their efforts to educate communities on public health against often racist policies and lack of access to care. The latest monument was dedicated to labor organizer Dolores Huerta. The exhibit included interviews, photos, and portraits at a depression-era migrant labor camp and former headquarters of the United Farm Workers.
These exhibits, essays, and other bodies of work detailed help us reimagine what is a monument. We sense the storyteller Frazier erect the monuments, for example, of Donnie Missouri, a CHW, who is in recovery from drug addiction and now specializes in substance use disorder and health equity as “a pillar of hope in the community.” These pillars of hope rest on a changing landscape of societal and economic injustices—the loss of stable work and communities subjected to toxic waste.
We tend to think of monuments as pillars sculpted to reflect the narratives of those considered most valuable. Yet, it is through Frazier’s art that we can see it is the everyday working-class people who are the pillars of society. Marcoci’s edited LaToya Ruby Frazier Monuments of Solidarity fights back against stigmas and the erasure of our unions, communities downtrodden by pollution, and other marginalized people. The reader can leave such a collection empowered to recognize injustice, the beauty and dignity of all work, and ultimately toward the need for advocacy to achieve equity. This book will not just reshape how we establish labor history but also who we uphold as our pillars of hope.