Written for the first New York exhibition of the Miscegenated Family Album installation, at Alexander Gray Associates, Chelsea, September 10 - October 11, 2008
© Lorraine O'Grady. 2008
My 1994 installation, Miscegenated Family Album, based on the 1980 performance Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, began as a memorial to my older sister Devonia, who died unexpectedly at the age of 37 before we could reconcile our troubled relationship. There was a parallel with Queen Nefertiti, who disappeared from Egyptian history when she was 36, perhaps banished when her husband Akhenaten took another wife. Nefertiti's sister Mutnedjmet, younger by 6 years, is always
seen either alone or walking at the end of processions, behind Nefertiti and her daughters and accompanied by two dwarves. Following Akhenaten's death in 1334 BC, the Theban priesthood ordered Mutnedjmet's husband, General Horemhab, to destroy all traces of the inventor of monotheism's reign. His city, Amarna, was plowed under the sands and not uncovered until the close of the 19th century by British and German archeologists.
Lorraine O'Grady
September 9, 2008
© 2009 Lorraine O'Grady | All rights reserved.