There’s one word that sums up LaToya Ruby Frazier’s show at MoMa and close inspection will reveal the implication in its name. The title? Monuments of Solidarity. The one word summary? Political. Not like a campaign or a pundit, but in the literal sense: “relating to the government or the public affairs of a country.”

Monuments is a collection of photography, photo essays and audio recordings that enshrines moments in time and makes record of long-unmended holes in the safety net. The sudden suffocation of a once-thriving steel town that lost financial and corporeal livelihoods when the hospital shuttered the social (and medical) dismissal of the lives stolen by HIV/AIDS, first hand accounts of the wholly preventable rashes and surgical recoveries had the system thought it worthwhile to save us from poisoned water and toxic air.

Frazier’s hyperlocal, on-the-ground approach to these crises point the viewer toward Flint, MI, Baltimore, MD, Lordstown, OH, or her hometown of Braddock, PA and you feel safe on 53rd street (for a New York minute.) Clearly, the artist’s intentions are far beyond pushing poverty/powerlessness porn. She’s blaming the system and not the symptoms; she’s letting us know that some corporation has already calculated your lack of access to quality of life as an ‘acceptable loss.’

Any doubt about her purpose is addressed in blood-red text with letters as big as your hand. The passage, by Dr. King, closes with the following plea, “one of the great needs of mankind is to be lifted above the morass of false propaganda.” A timeless sentiment (but timely, in an election year.)

It’s a deeply human experience. Walking through Monuments is like flipping through a yearbook for a high school you didn’t attend. You’re making sense of a community through their posed pictures and candids, their first hand accounts, mementos and accomplishments, their promise and their tragedies. You wonder: Where are they now? Where would I fit in?

The voices of more than 60 subjects join with Dr. King, Dolores Huerta (to whom an entire section is dedicated) and Frazier to appeal passivity: collective engagement is our greatest hope. All power to the people. We all we got.

“Monuments of Solidarity” by LaToya Ruby Frazier was on view at the MoMA until September 7, 2024.