Born in Brooklyn in 1960, Lorna Simpson came to prominence in the 1980s with her pioneering approach to conceptual photography.
Simpson’s early work – particularly her striking juxtapositions of text and staged images – raised questions about the nature of representation, identity, gender, race and history that continue to drive her practice today. Memory and history are both central themes in her work.
In 1990 she became the first African American woman to exhibit at the Venice Biennale, an international arts festival. By the mid-1990s, with her name firmly linked to photo- text, Simpson pushed in new directions to avoid what she characterized as a paralysis that could be created by outside expectations. While not abandoning photography, she turned her attention toward video installations.
Natural elements appear as a metaphor throughout a recent exhibition of her work. New sculptural works are glistening ‘ice’ blocks made of glass and, in one instance, an oversized ‘snowball’ made of plaster on top of which a small female figure perches precariously. The combination of the absurd and the association of the expression ‘to snowball’, alludes to an unstoppable force that gathers momentum with the potential to slip out of control. For Simpson, ice has a significance since it recalls the expression to be ‘on ice’, or in prison, as well as Eldridge Cleaver’s 1968 book ‘Soul on Ice’, written while the renowned activist was incarcerated in Folsom State Prison. Simpson remarks, ‘There’s something about ice that has come into the work that indicates either freezing or endurance.’
