LaToya Ruby Frazier
American visual artist
Award-winning American photographer, LaToya Ruby Frazier combines photography, video and performance art to focus on systematic problems, such as racism, environmental issues and deindustrialization, as well as more individual issues including relationships, bodies and space.
As well as being involved in many group exhibitions this year, LaToya’s 2019 series The Last Cruz was displayed as a solo exhibition at the Wexner Centre for the Arts. This series focuses on themes of labour, class and community in Lordstown, Ohio, where the General Motors plant closed in March 2019. This left many workers with the difficult choice to transfer, resulting in families and communities being torn apart, which LaToya captured through photographs and audio-visual aids. The Last Cruz will be shown at the California African American Museum in 2021.
In August LaToya photographed the family of Breonna Taylor, who was shot by police in her home earlier this year, for Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article about her life in Vanity Fair.