LaToya Ruby Frazier. Marilyn Moore, UAW Local 1112, Women’s Committee and Retiree Executive Board, (Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co., Lear Seating Corp., 32 years in at GM Lordstown Complex, Assembly Plant, Van Plant, Metal Fab, Trim Shop), with her General Motors retirement gold ring on her index finger, Youngstown, OH from The Last Cruze. 2019. © 2024 LaToya Ruby Frazier. Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone gallery

For International Workers’ Day in 2020, artist-activist LaToya Ruby Frazier compiled a playlist of 65 musical recordings from the 20th and 21st centuries—anthems of the enduring labor movement and working-class empowerment, from Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie to Green Day and Dolly Parton. At a moment when many of us were isolating amid the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, Frazier celebrated the frontline workers across the world and advocated for members of society for whom social distancing was not an option. On the occasion of LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity, the artist’s current survey exhibition at MoMA, we are republishing Frazier’s powerful words from May 2020 and the galvanizing collection of songs that speak to the core of her practice and exhibition. As she has said: “It’s about solidarity, unity, and selfless love.”
—Caitlin Ryan, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography


This playlist is dedicated to all the essential workers, healthcare workers, the poor, working-class people of this nation and all around the world, to the uninsured, disabled, detained, to the prisoners, to the sick who can’t get their medication because politicians and pharmaceutical companies would rather line their pockets, to the elderly abandoned in nursing homes, to all the teachers who have died, to the unclaimed bodies being buried in mass graves, to all those who mourn loved ones taken out by this virus, to the farmworkers that fascist capitalists proclaim that this is not your land when history tells us it rightfully is your land—thank you for feeding this nation during this pandemic and ensuing famine, to the homeless and people in the nation who have no clean water access to water in order to wash your hands, to the climate activists, first nations and Indigenous people that continue to take a stand with their bodies on the line against fossil fuel companies that keep polluting and contaminating the earth and water thank you. To the 26.5 million US workers that have filed for unemployment, it is never too late for the people to unite and fight for a more equal, just, humane, and sustainable life.
With unwavering Solidarity and Love, LaToya Ruby Frazier

LaToya Ruby Frazier. Momme, from The Notion of Family. 2008

LaToya Ruby Frazier. Momme, from The Notion of Family. 2008

LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity is on view at MoMA May 12–September 7, 2024.