Lorna Simpson lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 1983, and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego in 1985. When Lorna Simpson emerged from the graduate program at San Diego in 1985, she was already considered a pioneer of conceptual photography.

Feeling a strong need to re-examine and re-define photographic practice for contemporary relevance, Simpson was producing work that engaged the conceptual vocabulary of the time by creating exquisitely crafted documents that are as clean and spare as the closed, cyclic systems of meaning they produce. Her initial body of work alone helped to incite a significant shift in the view of the photographic art’s transience and malleability.

She first became well-known in the mid-1980s for her large- scale photograph-and-text works that confront and challenge narrow, conventional views of gender, identity, culture, history and memory. With unidentified figures as a visual point of departure, Simpson uses the figure to examine the ways in which gender and culture shape the interactions, relationships and experiences of our lives in contemporary America.

In the mid-1990s, she began creating large multi-panel photographs printed on felt that depict the sites of public – yet unseen – sexual encounters. Over time she turned to film and video works in which individuals engage in enigmatic conversations that seem to address the mysteries of both identity and desire. Throughout her body of work, Simpson questions memory and representation, whether in her moving juxtaposition of text and image, in her haunting video projection Cloudscape and its echo in the felt work Cloud, or in her large-scale video installation Momentum, which recreates a childhood dance performance.

Using the camera as a catalyst, Simpson constructs work comprising text and image, parts to wholes, which comment on the documentary nature of found or staged images. In Simpson’s latest works, characteristic ambivalence is presented with hazy ink washes to present isolated figures amidst nebulous spaces– a return to and departure from her earlier unidentified figures in a deepened exploration of contemporary culture.

Her works have been exhibited at and are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Haus der Kunst; Munich amongst others.

Important international exhibitions have included the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Documenta XI in Kassel, Germany, and the 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy.

GRANTS/AWARDS/HONORS


2018

Honoree, Whitney Museum of American Art Gala, New York, NY
Medal Award, School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Medford, MA Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts, University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA

2017

Honoree, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC

Honoree, Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL

2014

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize Short List, Photographer’s Gallery, London, UK

2011

Asher B, Durand Award Recipient, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY

2010

Infinity Award in Art, ICP, New York, NY

2006

Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY
Alphonse Fletscher Sr. Fellowship

2003

Distinguished Artist-In-Residence, The Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY. Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, Louis Comfort Tiffany 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

1999

Award Finalist, The Hugo Boss Prize

1998,

Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, NY

1994

College Art Association

1989

Artists’ Space Board of Directors, New York, NY
AVA 9, Awards in the Visual Arts, Winston Salem, NC

1988

Polaroid Corporation, 20 x 24 Camera Award, New York, NY

1987

Workspace Grant, Jamaica Arts Center, Queens, NY

1986

Artists’ Advisory Board, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY

1986

National Studio Program, P.S.1, New York, NY

1985

National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Management Fellowship, Washington, DC.

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
The Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
?The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
The Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY
The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
The Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP), France

The Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, NY
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
The Collection of Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France
The Contemporary Arts Center, Honolulu, HI
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA.

The Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
The Department of Cultural Affairs, Chicago, IL
?The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI?
The Des Moines Art Museum, Des Moines, IA
The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
?Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland
The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI
The Krannert Art Museum, The University of Illinois Champaign, Champaign IL.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
The Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL
The Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
?The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The New School for Social Research, New York, NY
The New York Public Library, New York, NY
The Progressive Corporation, Mayfield Heights, OH
The Reader's Digest Corporation, Pleasantville, NY
The Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada
The Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
The Sprint Corporate Collection, Overland Park, KS
The Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, NY
Tate Modern, London, England
The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
The Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT
The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
The Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, CT



Source:
Website of the artist, July 2019