LaToya Ruby Frazier (born 1982, Braddock, Pennsylvania) received her BFA in applied media arts from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania (2004) and her MFA in art photography from Syracuse University (2007). She also studied under the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (2010–2011) and was the Guna S. Mundheim Fellow for visual arts at the American Academy in Berlin (2013–2014).
Frazier works in photography, video and performance to build visual archives that address industrialism, rustbelt revitalization, environmental justice, healthcare inequity, family and communal history. In 2015 her first book The Notion of Family (Aperture 2014) received the International Center for Photography Infinity Award.
In 2014, Frazier accepted the assistant professor of photography position at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has previously held academic and curatorial positions at Yale University School of Art, Rutgers University, and Syracuse University. Frazier lectures prolifically at academic and cultural institutions such as International Center of Photography, NY; Columbia University School of the Arts, NY; Parsons, New School, NY; Pratt Institute, NY; Cooper Union, NY; Tisch School of Arts, New York University; School of Visual Arts, NY; Freie Universitat Berlin, Dahlem Humanities Center and Hamburger Bahnhof; and Tate Modern, London among others.
Frazier’s work is exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally, with notable solo exhibitions at Brooklyn Museum; Seattle Art Museum; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Her work has also been featured in the following group shows: The Generational Triennial: Younger Than Jesus (2009), New Museum, NY; Greater New York (2010), MoMA PS1, NY; Commercial Break, Garage Projects (2011), 54th Venice Biennale; Gertrude’s/LOT (2011), Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Empire State (2013), Palazzo delle Esposizinoi, Rome; and The Way Of The Shovel: Art as Archaeology (2013), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago among many others.
Her work has been exhibited in the following biennials: the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial (2012), NY; Recycling Memory: Recapturing the Lost City (2014), 11th Nicaraguan Visual Arts Biennial, Managua; Mom, am, I barbarian? (2013),13th Istanbul Biennial; and Busan Biennale (2014), South Korea.
Frazier is the recipient of many awards, including a fellowship from John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2014), Gwendolyn Knight & Jacob Lawrence Prize of the Seattle Art Museum (2013), the Theo Westenberger Award of the Creative Capital Foundation (2012), the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2011), and Art Matters (2010).
Her work can be found in public and private art collections such as Museum of Modern Art; Brooklyn Museum; Seattle Art Museum; Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh; Centre National Des Arts Plastiques, France; JP Morgan Chase Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago; Nasher Museum at Duke University, Durham, N.C.; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Zabludowicz Collection, London, and Pomeranz Collection, Vienna among others.
LaToya Ruby Frazier’s body of work “The Notion of Family” examines the impact of the steel industry and the health care system on the community and her family. Collaborating with her mother and grandmother, she uses her family as a lens to view the past, present and future of the town.