The exhibition Window to Wall: Art from Architecture surveys the ways in which artists have turned their attention—and ours—to architecture through a focus on structure and surface as well as the buildings’ emotional and political resonances.
LaToya Ruby Frazier and other contemporary artists emphasize that architecture is far from neutral, actively shaping and reflecting a society’s culture, politics, and history.
LaToya Ruby Frazier (American, born 1982). Self Portrait Lying on a Pile of Rubble, 2007. Gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches (50.8 x 61 cm). Courtesy the Artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/Rome
Frazier’s photographs draw parallels between the quality of life in her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, and the conditions of its infrastructure and architecture. In Self Portrait Lying on a Pile of Rubble, she literalizes this idea by conforming the shape of her body to the shape of a junkyard pile. By using her own body as part of the landscape, Frazier emphasizes the way in which the degradation of the urban environment can disproportionately impact African Americans and other minority communities who continue to live there.
