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Simpson Lorna
Simpson Lorna born in 1960 is an African American artist and photographer who made her name in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as Guarded Conditions and square Deal.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, she attended the High school and the School of Visual Arn in New York, and then the University of California, Her earliest work was as a documentary street photographer, before moving her observations of race and society into her studio. Simpson began exploring ethnic divisions in the 1980s era of multiculturalism. Her most notable works combine words with photographs of anonymously cropped images of women and occasionally men. While the pictures may appear straightforward, the text will often confront the viewer with the underlying racism still found in American culture.
Simpson's 1989 work, Necklines, shows two circular and identical photographs of a black woman's mouth, chin, neck, and collar bone. The white text, “ring, surround, lasso, noose, eye, areola, halo, cuffs, collar, loop”, individual words on black plaques, imply menace, binding or worse. The final phrase, text on red “feel the ground sliding from under you,” openly suggests lynching, though the adjacent images remain serene, non-confrontational and elegant.
Simpson has explored various media and techniques, including two-dimensional photographs as well as silk screening her photographs on large felt panels, creating installations, or producing as video works such as Call Waiting (1997). She was the first Black woman to participate at the Venice Biennale. In a recent video work,Corridor (2003), Simpson sets two women side-by-side; a household servant from 1860 and a wealthy homeowner from 1960. Both women are portrayed by artist Wangechi Mutu, allowing parallel and haunting relationships to be drawn. She has commented "I do not appear in any of my work. I think maybe there are elements to it and moments to it that I use from my own personal experience, but that, in and of itself, is not so important as what the work is trying to say about either the way we interpret experience or the way we interpret things about identity."
Her work often portrays black women combined with text to express contemporary society's relationship with race, ethnicity and sex.
Private life
Simpson lives in Brooklyn with her husband, photographer James Casebere, and their daughter Zora.
Awards
- 1989 Artists’ Space Board of Directors, New York, NY
- 1990 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation New York, NY
- 1998 Finalist, Hugo Boss Prize 1998, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, NY
- 2001 The Whitney Museum of American Art Award sponsored by Cartier and the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, New York, NY
- 2003 Distinguished Artist-In-Residence, Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY
- 2014 Shortlisted for the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2014 for her self-titled exhibition in Paris.
Further reading
- Simpson, Lorna; Willis, Deborah; Grundberg, Andy (1992). Lorna Simpson. San Francisco: The Friends of Photography.
- Simpson, Lorna; Wright, Beryl J.; Hartman, Saidiya V. (1992). Lorna Simpson: for the sake of the viewer. New York: Universe Pub.
- Rogers-Lafferty, Sarah; Simpson, Lorna (1997). Lorna Simpson: interior/exterior, full/empty. Columbus, Ohio: Wexner Center for the Arts/The Ohio State University.
- Brockington, Horace. "Logical Anonymity: Lorna Simpson, Steve McQueen, Stan Douglas." International Review of African American Art 15 No. 3 (1998): 20-29.
- Gili, Marta (2002). Lorna Simpson. Ediciones Universidad Salamanca.
- Jones, Kellie; Simpson, Lorna; Golden, Thelma; Iles, Chrissie (2002). Lorna Simpson. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Phaidon.
- Simpson, Lorna; Gili, Marta; Fernández-Cid, Miguel (2004). Compostela: Lorna Simpson: Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, 5 marzo - 30 maio 2004, Santiago de Compostela. Santiago de Compostela, Spain: Xunta de Galicia.
- Momin, Shamim; Enwezor, Okwui; Simpson, Lorna; Posner, Helaine; Als, Hilton; Isaac Julien; Golden, Thelma (2006). Lorna Simpson. New York: Abrams, in association with the American Federation of Arts.
