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Hidden Figures: Lorna Simpson

1,373 views · Published 22 August 2018 · 6:28 · Indexed 21 September 2026

Channel: Sensei Aishitemasu · 2018 · Entertainment

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Lorna Simpson is an African-American photographer and multimedia artist who made her name in the 1980s and 1990s. She is one of the leading artists of her generation, and her works have been included in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally. She is best known for her photo-text installations, photocollages, and films.

These works generally related to the perception of African-American women within American culture. Simpson's work often portrays black women combined with text to express contemporary society's relationship with race, ethnicity and sex. In many of her works, the subjects are black women with obscured faces, causing a denial of gaze and the interaction associated with visual exchange. Through repetitive use of the same portrait combined with graphic text, her "anti-portraits" have a sense of scientific classification, addressing the cultural associations of black bodies. The complex historical and symbolic associations of African-American hairstyles are also often brought into play in her work. 

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Simpson was showing work through solo exhibitions all over the country, and her name was synonymous with photo-text artworks. She was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1985, and in 1990, she became the first African-American woman to exhibit at the Venice Biennale. In 1990, Simpson had one woman exhibitions at several major museums, including the Denver Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. Simpson has explored various media and techniques, including two-dimensional photographs as well as silk screening her photographs on large felt panels, creating installations.

By the 2000s she had started exploring the medium of video installations in order to avoid a paralysis brought on by outside expectations. In 2001 she was awarded the Whitney Museum of Art Award, and in 2007, her work was featured in a 20-year retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in her hometown of New York City.

Simpson's work has been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Miami Art Museum, the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, among other museums. In 2016 Simpson created the album artwork for Black America Again by Common. 

Simpson lives in Brooklyn with her daughter.

#HiddenFigures #LornaSimpson

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Links:

INTERVIEW: LORNA SIMPSON
http://saintheron.com/art/interview-lorna-simpson/

'Lorna Simpson, America’s Most Defiant Conceptual Artist, Makes A Radical Change—To Painting:'
https://www.vogue.com/article/lorna-simpson-vogue-interview-march-2018-issue

Lorna Simpson:
https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/lorna-simpson

Daring as a Woman - An Interview with Lorna Simpson:
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11/10/daring-woman-interview-lorna-simpson/

ARTISTS AT WORK: LORNA SIMPSON
https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/artists-at-work-lorna-simpson

Lorna Simpson Maps the Complex Galaxies of Black Women’s Hair:
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/06/lorna-simpson-maps-the-complex-galaxies-of-black-womens-hair/561245/

Lorna Simpson:
http://www.artnet.com/artists/lorna-simpson/

WHO IS LORNA SIMPSON?
https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/who-is/who-lorna-simpson

Lorna Simpson - Unanswerable:
https://www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/6238-lorna-simpson-unanswerable

Lorna Simpson:
https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/2860-lorna-simpson

https://www.artsy.net/artist/lorna-simpson?page=1&sort=-partner_updated_at

Lorna Simpson (Wikipedia):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorna_Simpson

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