February Creative Reuse Events

Black History Month & the Environment: Artists’ Spotlight

Art is a vital tool for documenting and communicating our lived experiences, so that we can share with and learn from each other. This February for Black History Month, we’re spotlighting influential Black artists who use art to highlight the intersection of race, environmental justice, and sustainability in their work in different ways.

LaToya Ruby Frazier

Named in TIME’s list of 100 Most Influential People of 2024, LaToya Ruby Frazier is an artist and writer who uses photography, video, and performance in her work to “resist […] historical erasure and amnesia,” using “collaborative storytelling” to explore topics related to environmental justice and human rights in her stark and intimate portraits of the human experience.

Listen to her TED Talk about about her body of work created during the water crisis in Flint, MI for the photo essay “Flint is Family.” In this work, Frazier documents the ways lead in the city’s drinking water affected every aspect of citizens’ lives from their ability to cook, to their children’s drinking fountains in schools in a powerful and personal portrayal of residents’ stories.

Read her book: The Notion of Family, which “offers an incisive exploration of the legacy of racism and economic decline in America’s small towns, as embodied by Braddock, Pennsylvania, Frazier’s hometown.”

Paying homage to America’s working class: LaToya Ruby Frazier on documentary photography

In an interview with MoMA, Frazier talks about Lee Friedlander’s “Ohio Factory Valley” series influence on her own perspective, and the legacy of the Black women of America’s working class.

Nick Cave

Fall down a rabbit hole of vivid colors and fantastical expression with the work of Nick Cave, an American sculptor, dancer, and performance artist. His work often employs found-objects and fiber arts, and he is best known for his “Soundsuits,” sculptures which can stand alone in a gallery, or may be worn by a dancer as both costume and percussive instrument.

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Art Talk: An Interview with Nick Cave at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

In an interview with the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston, artist Nick Cave describes the thought process and inspiration behind his work, including the moment of introspection in which he created his first Soundsuit as a representation of “sort of secondary skins…suits of armor; protection,” as he processed the events of the Los Angeles riots in response to the beating of Rodney King by police officers in 1991.

Learn more about his work in this article from the New York Times, describing his creation of mosaic depictions of these sculptures in the subway station at Times Square in New York City.

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