Lorna Simpson.

by Okwui; ALS ENWEZOR

Lorna Simpson, which accompanies a major mid-career retrospective organized by the American Federation of Arts, offers a comprehensive examination of this artist's remarkable achievement over a period of more than twenty years of production. The works featured include examples of the artist's earliest photograph and text works, in which she introduces the basic elements of combining a figure whose body is often cropped or whose face is hidden from view with fragments of text that confound the viewer's expectations of narrative and identity. Simpson's illustrious career is charted up to the present with film and video installations from 1997 to 2004, as well as the artist's most recent photographs.

Genres: Art, Photography, Nonfiction

157 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2006

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book marks my first experience with the work of African American multimedia artist Lorna Simpson. Her photography most interests me. Simpson’s art explores important issues such as race, gender, representation, and identity, usually in an obscure manner. She states in an interview:

“I want to avoid works that are just two-dimensional or easily read in the sense that as you’re watching you think you get all the details and that’s the end of the story. I prefer gaps and contradictions so that not all the viewer’s questions are answered. In the narrative pieces, with text, I’ve always wanted to keep that open so as not to nail down a monolithic type or character within works.” (p. 138).

Given the seriousness of most of Simpson’s art pieces, I was surprised to see her reference John Water’s 1974 trashy dark comedy Female Trouble in her piece The Rock (1995) found on pages 52-53.

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[Image: Book Cover]

Citation:
Simpson, L., Enwezor, O., Posner, H., Als, H., Julien, I., Golden, T., & Momin, S.M. (2006). Lorna Simpson. American Federation of Arts.

Title: Lorna Simpson
Author(s): Lorna Simpson (works), Okwui Enwezor (essay), Helaine Posner (curator’s foreword), Hilton Als (essay), Isaac Julien (contributor), Thelma Golden (contributor), Shamim M. Momin (preface)
Year: 2006
Genre: Nonfiction - Art, photography
Page count: 158 pages
Date(s) read: 2/23/25
Book 41 in 2025
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[Trudy Ferrer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can’t wait to bestow this gem.