Light Work and Urban Video Project (UVP) are proud to present Accumulations and Number Sixteen, concurrent exhibitions featuring the work of Xaviera Simmons, whose multidisciplinary artistic practice includes photography, sculpture, installation, sound art, video, and performance. Number Sixteen will be on view at UVP’s Everson Museum facade venue from January 15 through January 31, and Accumulations will be on view at Light Work from January 12 through March 5, 2015.

Simmons will give an in-person artist talk on Tuesday, January 27 at 6:30pm in the Watson Auditorium at Light Work on the Syracuse University campus. This talk is co-sponsored by the Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts Visiting Artist Lecture Series.

Simmons will also be present for an informal gallery talk and reception at Light Work on Wednesday, January 28 from 5-7pm.

Both the artist talk and gallery talk & reception are FREE & OPEN to the public.

About the Work

Number Sixteen
2013 | Total run time: 60:00

Simmons’ multidisciplinary work explores the sculptural and performative through a photographic lens. Simmons contextualizes her practice through her theatrical background, stating, “Great actors understand themselves. My work is about what brings me joy and breaks my heart.”

Number Sixteen is an hour-long, unedited video documenting a performance produced without an audience that engages endurance, abstraction and the energies beneath abstraction. In the video, a vocalist and performer work together in a studio space. The video’s audience becomes witness to a layered convergence: materials and texts, script and chance, sound and image, time and space, the body and its limits. Like the photographic and sculptural works in Accumulations, Number Sixteen reveals a complex network of accumulated inspirations, cultural allusions and visceral histories.

For more information about Accumulations, go to: lightwork.org

About the Artist

Xaviera Simmons received her B.F.A. from Bard College in 2004, after spending two years on a walking pilgrimage retracing the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade with Buddhist monks. She completed the Whitney Museum’s independent study program in studio art in 2005, while simultaneously completing a two-year actor-training conservatory with the Maggie Flanigan Studio. Simmons has exhibited nationally and internationally. Major exhibitions and performances include the Museum of Modern Art, New York City; MoMA PS1, New York City; the Studio Museum In Harlem, New York City; the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; the Public Art Fund, New York City; David Castillo Gallery, Miami; among many others. Her works are in major museum and private collections, including Deutsche Bank, UBS, the Guggenheim Museum, the Agnes Gund Art Collection, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Studio Museum in Harlem, MOCA Miami and the Perez Art Museum, Miami.

For more information, visit: davidcastillogallery.com/xaviera-simmons

Sponsors

This exhibition was supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.