The artist collective GRIT has issued a sharp critique of Fia Backström’s exhibition, "The Great Society," currently on view at the Queens Museum. The authors argue that Backström, a European artist, engages in "extractive" storytelling by focusing exclusively on trauma, environmental disaster, and poverty in West Virginia. They contend that the exhibition’s aesthetic choices—such as inverting landscape photographs and omitting human subjects—flatten the region's complexity into a spectacle of misery that alienates the very community it claims to represent.
This critique highlights a persistent tension in the art world regarding positionality and the ethics of representing marginalized communities. By challenging a previous positive review of the show, the collective raises vital questions about who is granted the authority to narrate Appalachian history within elite institutions. The controversy underscores a growing demand for institutional accountability and for the inclusion of lived experiences over external, often reductive, artistic interpretations.