Immediately following the death of her older sister, Devonia Evangeline, Lorraine O’Grady travels to Egypt in 1962 where she develops an interest in Egyptology and discovers a distinctive resemblance between herself and the citizens of Cairo. After extensive research, the artist created 16 diptychs which paired her personal familial images with images of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti’s familial line, almost 3 decades after her trip. The relief detail O’Grady incorporated into this diptych is also taken from a work in the Brooklyn Museum collection.
The diptych, titled “Miscegenated Family Album (A Mother’s Kiss),” portrays Devonia Evangeline embracing her daughter Candace as Nefertiti embraces her daughter in a nearly identical bodily language. More than three millennia is separated by a thick bar of white space. In this work, O’Grady aligns her own biography with world history, perhaps calling to fore the often estranged relationship between African Americans and the African continent due to colonialism and histories of erasure.
Posted by Jenée-Daria Strand Lorraine O'Grady (American, born 1934). Miscegenated Family Album (A Mother’s Kiss), T: Candace and Devonian; B: Nefertiti and daughter, 1980/1994. Cibachrome prints. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York. © Lorraine O’Grady/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York