This colloquium is an exploratory talk presenting a close, single- object analysis of Woman of Steel Button Pin (2017) from LaToya Ruby Frazier’s On the Making of Steel Genesis: Sandra Gould Ford exhibition, asking what forms of labor history and reproductive rights become legible when the title Woman of Steel is approached through material memory rather than symbolic representation?

About the Speaker: Monica Daniels is a second-year graduate student in the HAA department whose research focuses on contemporary art and Black women’s visual culture. She is an alumna of the Hot Metal Bridge Program and a current K. Leroy Irvis Fellow. Her work examines the intersections of labor, environmental justice, and community memory practices as they shape Black experiences within industrial and post industrial landscapes.

Image: LaToya Ruby Frazier, Woman of Steel Button Pin, 2017. Cyanotype print, 19 x 23 ¾ in. Reproduced from LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2024), 135.