The Frost Art Museum at Florida International University in Miami presents, LaToya Ruby Frazier: Flint is Family (Jan. 30-April 14). After the water supply in Flint was switched, residents began noticing rashes on their skin and their hair was falling out. There was an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, and twelve people died. One resident’s water tested twenty-seven times the federal limit for lead, and lead was discovered in the water fountains at three public schools. It would take over seventeen months for the state of Michigan, to switch the water back. By this time, irreparable damage occurred to thousands of people. Frazier captured close family moments as well as the daily efforts the family faced without access to clean water. Simple tasks, like cooking a meal, were not possible. Flint residents were forced to drink, cook with and even bathe in bottled water, while paying some of the highest water bills in the country for their poisoned water.
Frazier works in photography, video and performance to build visual archives that address industrialism, revitalization of the rustbelt, environmental justice, healthcare inequity, family and communal history. Her many awards and honors include: the International Center for Photography Infinity Award, fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s MacArthur Fellows Program, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. In 2015, the Allegheny County Council (Pennsylvania, USA) awarded Frazier a Proclamation thanking her for “examining race, class, gender and citizenship in our society and inspiring a vision for the future that offers inclusion, equity and justice to all.”
The original photo documentary by Frazier was featured in the 2016 expose by ELLE Magazine. The voices of the resilient families who suffered and thrived through the worst man-made environmental catastrophe in U.S. history narrate this compelling video. At the Frost Art Museum FIU, this exhibition was organized by Maryanna Ramirez, Manager of Strategic Initiatives, and is part of the museum’s Martin Luther King, Jr. exhibition series. Sponsored by: the African & African Diaspora Studies Program/College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts, the FIU Alumni Association, the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, the Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work, and Multicultural Programs and Services.
LaToya Ruby Frazier: Flint is Family
January 30 — April 14, 2019
The Frost Art Museum
10975 SW 17th St
Miami, FL 33199
