Waiting for Mlle Bourgeoise Noire and the Power of Interruption

Abstract

“All these years she has been waiting,” wrote Lorraine O’Grady (b. 1934) in 1981, “for this 25th Anniversary to give her subjects her final conclusion.”1 She was referring to the quarter century between her graduation from the all-women, elite institution, Wellesley College, and the debut of her artistic persona as Mademoiselle Bourgeoise Noire (French for Miss Black Middle Class). Under this guise, O’Grady orchestrated a series of performative interventions in New York City in the early 1980s. She protested two art openings dressed like a pageant winner in a floor-length gown made out of 360 white leather gloves. Carrying a bouquet of flowers, she asked attendants, “Won’t you lighten my load?” (fig. 1). After handing out every flower, O’Grady pulled out what she termed “the whip-that-made-plantationsmove” and self-flagellated repeatedly.2 Eventually throwing the whip down to the floor while still panting, she screamed a poem. For the opening of an exhibition at the New Museum about the use of artistic alter egos, titled Persona (1981), which featured only white artists, her poem spoke about waiting in protest: