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Simmons, Xaviera
American, b. 1974
Xaviera Simmons’s interdisciplinary practice is an ongoing investigation of memory, landscape, and abstraction as they relate to the Black and African diaspora. She often works cyclically, moving among work in photography, sculpture, installation, performance, video, and sound to examine the fragmented nature of identity from various perspectives. Synthesizing research with personal experience, Simmons’s staged compositions engage with narrative as something mutable and multilayered. “I am really engaged with in-between spaces, with non-linear narratives” she told Art Pulse Magazine. “I don’t see an illusion of time; I just see the amalgamation of all of the histories and narratives and my own interests.”
In observation, her Index, Composition series (2011-present) creates faceless portraits from mixing cultural artifacts and images. Each photograph shows a covered human figure lifting her skirt to reveal an assortment of items underneath. The viewer is asked to connect the various ethno-cultural references to conceptualize the implied persona, highlighting the tensions between self and other.
Xaviera Simmons received her BFA from Bard College (2004) and completed the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art (2005). She was the inaugural Solomon Fellow and visiting lecturer at Harvard University in 2019. Simmons has exhibited works at Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; to name a few. Her work is in the permanent collections at Museum of Modern Art, New York; Perez Art Museum, Miami; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and many others.
