Lorna Simpson

BROOKLYN, NY—Considered one of the leading artists of her generation, New York City native Lorna Simpson has been exploring notions of race, culture and gender in her work since the mid-1980s.

In the early days of her career, Simpson began to receive attention for photography-based work that challenged traditional narrative styles and expectations about identity with revealing juxtapositions of images and text. She has maintained similar interests throughout her career, while progressing through a variety of media: from large-scale felt works to film and video installations to her most recent photography series.

The entire range of Simpson’s work, produced over a 20-year period, is the subject of a traveling exhibition that has crisscrossed the country over the past year. It has appeared in Los Angeles, Miami and now at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, through May 6, 2007.

On the occasion of the show’s return to her hometown, Simpson spoke to ArtInfo about the experience of having a mid-career survey and her reflections on the 20 years of work in the show.

Lorna, as a native New Yorker does having this show arrive at the Whitney feel like a homecoming of sorts?

It feels as though I am showing in my hometown certainly, and that’s exciting. But I’ve been showing a lot here in terms of having gallery shows in New York, so some of the work has been seen by a local audience.

But I think because it’s at the Whitney, it will have a broader audience of visitors than the smaller Chelsea gallery audience.

How involved were you in selecting work for the retrospective?

I’ve worked closely with Helaine Posner, who’s the curator from the American Federation of the Arts [who organized the exhibition].

I don’t see it as a retrospective, but more of a survey of work over a period of time. In being under 50 [laughs]—or I should say late 40s—it doesn’t really feel like a retrospective, because I feel as though it is not the majority of the work I will do—but certainly a selection of it.

Was it difficult to choose favorites, like choosing from among your children?

Because the work has a broad range of mediums—there are two-dimensional photographic works, works that are silk-screens on felt, there are video works and some installations—I wanted to do a balance of early work from the ’80s, but also cover all these different areas that I’ve explored.

I was, kind of, trying to get a variety of the work that I had done and the different genres that I have touched throughout that time.

Juxtaposing images is a consistent and essential formal strategy in your work. Does seeing individual pieces juxtaposed with your entire output change the way you understand them?

A lot of times the work was conceived in suites, particularly the two-dimensional work. They were kind of done in concert. It’s rare that there’s a work that is really a one-off, meaning that there is just one work of a particular sort.

I kind of do, over the course of maybe a couple of years, work within [separate] bodies of work. I think maybe I hadn’t had the opportunity to see all of those related works all together in one room—for instance, the felt works that are presented. There are a lot of serigraphs on felt that appear in the show. And those, I’ve seen maybe seven or 10 at a time in a room, so it’s really nice to see many more of them all at once.

Were there any surprises for you when you saw all the work together?

No, not really, but I might have had a different answer last year.

The Whitney will be the third venue, so I might be just a little jaded. [laughs] There might have been a surprise, but now it has certainly worn off completely.

In the exhibition, are you aware of the social or political implications of your work changing over the decades?

I don’t think it has in terms of my relationship to it. Rereading reviews and things that were written, it’s interesting how the tone and categorization of the work changed over periods of time—I guess, a 10-year period.

I wouldn’t say that my relationship to the work has so much changed, but it’s certainly clear there are different agendas with which it has been written about. So when I look back at the work, I don’t think my sociopolitical or artistic relationship to it changes. The world around changes a bit more.