Industrial Residue in the Rust Belt: LaToya Ruby Frazier and Taylor Renee Aldridge in Conversation

'To inaugurate The Last Cruze exhibition at California African American Museum, the artist LaToya Ruby Frazier will be joined by CAAM Visual Arts Curator Taylor Renee Aldridge to discuss Frazier’s ongoing work in documentary film and photography. In various interconnected bodies of work, Frazier uses collaborative storytelling with the people who appear in her artwork to celebrate working-class individuals and to address topics of industrialism, environmental justice, workers’ rights, human rights, and family. The Last Cruze extends this impulse by offering a monument to the workers of the former General Motors factory in Lordstown, Ohio, which was “unallocated” in 2019, leaving many of the factory workers unemployed. Frazier and Aldridge will discuss Black Americans’ contributions to the history of industrial advancement in this country, and how post-industrial decline continues to negatively impact working-class communities in Rust Belt cities, like Frazier’s hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania.'