Landscape of the Body (Epilepsy Test),

2011

Many of Frazier’s photographs narrate illnesses in her family, resulting from exposure to environmental toxins released by the steel mill in Braddock, Pennsylvania. A commentary on the inequities of health care, this work evokes the 2010–11 closing and demolition of the UPMC Braddock Hospital—a vital resource for the predominantly African American community—which occurred while a new facility was being built in an affluent Pittsburgh suburb. The left image portrays the artist’s mother hooked up to monitors, while the right shows the gutted hospital building. In Frazier’s words: “I’ll never forget documenting the UPMC Braddock hospital demolition and feeling how the ground shook and trembled like a convulsion or spasm similar to how my mother described her epilepsy-like seizures.”