Description
Xaviera Simmons’ work spans photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture, and installation. She roots her studio practice in shifting definitions of landscape, character development, political/social/art histories, and interconnected formal processes. In Simmons’ print, Untitled (Yellow) #2 (2014), a figure holds up a grid of twelve repeating images of a Dinka woman carrying her baby across the river in South Sudan, stripped to reveal her traditional beaded jewelry, representative of many photographs taken by westerners who have made careers documenting tribal cultures. Criticism centers on their creating a subjective fantasy of the indigenous African as a reduced, ritualized being. Simmons questions, re-contextualizes, and literally maps the image. Simmons received her BFA from Bard College in 2004, after a two-year walking pilgrimage retracing the transatlantic slave trade with Buddhist monks. Simmons’ major exhibitions include MoMA PS1 (NYC), The Museum of Modern Art (NYC), and The Studio Museum In Harlem (NYC). Collections holding her work include The Agnes Gund Art Collection, Deutsche Bank, The Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and UBS. Simmons participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence program in March 2008.
