Speaking Out of Turn is the first monograph dedicated to the forty-year oeuvre of feminist conceptual artist Lorraine O’Grady. Examining O’Grady’s use of language, both written and spoken, Stephanie Sparling Williams charts the artist’s strategic use of direct address—the dialectic posture her art takes in relationship to its viewers—to trouble the field of vision and claim a voice in the late 1970s through the 1990s, when her voice was seen as “out of turn” in the art world. Speaking Out of Turn situates O’Grady’s significant contributions within the history of American conceptualism and performance art while also attending to the work’s heightened visibility in the contemporary moment, revealing both the marginalization of O’Grady in the past and an urgent need to revisit her art in the present.

About the Author

Stephanie Sparling Williams is Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum.

From Our Blog

UC Press Award-Winning Authors

UC Press is proud to publish award-winning authors and books across many disciplines. Below are some of our recent award winners from August and September 2022. Please join us in celebrating these scholars by sharing the news!Daniel Morgan2021 Modernist Studies Association Book Prize

Celebrating Black Artists for Black History Month: Lorraine O’Grady

Black History Month is a powerful occasion to recognize, learn from, and reflect on Black stories, histories, and legacies in America. Join us in taking this time to celebrate and highlight Black artists and some of the books that we have had the privilege to publish on these artists.Born in

The Overdue Recognition of Lorraine O’Grady, Trailblazer of the Conceptual, Black Feminist Avant-Garde

A look into the work and career of artist Lorraine O'Grady is also a chronicle of the art world's exclusionary politics. As Cassidy George writes in an article for Vogue: "O’Grady—both then and now—saw the city’s art scene for what it was: an elitist world defined by hierarchies of race, gender, and

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. Mark My Words
2. "I Am Not a Performance Artist"
3. Manifestos and Mythmaking
4. The Diptych and "Spatial Narrative"

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

"Following the thread of language through the entire course of Lorraine O’Grady’s extraordinary career, in this impressive monograph Stephanie Sparling Williams charts a rigorous, thrilling line through the work of one of the most significant artists of our time."—Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator, The Studio Museum in Harlem

"Insightful and compelling, Sparling Williams's analysis reveals the complex interplay between word and image in the groundbreaking career of artist Lorraine O’Grady. Throughout, Sparling Williams's sustained, nuanced, and layered engagement with the artist's use of language reveals its crucial role in pointing out—and strategically opposing—exclusionary practices in the art world, and beyond."—Rebecca Peabody, author of Consuming Stories: Kara Walker and the Imagining of American Race

"It is a rare treat to read a work about an iconic black feminist artist and critic written by an outstanding emerging black feminist artist and critic. Sparling Williams's Speaking Out of Turn offers powerful commentary on, and a breathtaking compendium of, Lorraine O’Grady’s incomparable artistry. This book is undoubtedly one for the ages."—Reiland Rabaka, author of The Negritude Movement and Forms of Fanonism

Awards

ASAP Book Prize Shortlist 2022 2022, Association for the study of arts of the present
James A. Porter Book Award 2022 2022, Porter Colloquium

About the Book