Neema Griffin - Xaviera Simmons Interpretation on Black Women in Landscape

Xaviera Simmons is an African American Artist, based in New York, who is known for her work in sculpture, performance, installation, conceptual art, and photography. Xaviera Simmons could also be recognized for her multiple residences, fellowships, grants, and awards. Although I would consider her to be a more newly popular artist than the ones that we discussed in the African American Art course, she has created commendable work in her career so far. She’s displayed her work in many art shows since her first one in early 2000s and continues to make art today. Her works of art are also influenced by her travel to Africa. She learned about different cultures and was able to gain valuable insight into her own. 

After visiting Africa, she realized that there was work she had to do in America to help in establishing African American identity because she was not sure where to call home when going away. Because of this initial question, a lot of her work focuses on individuality and the African American experience from her perspective. The reality of being African American, in her opinion, is entirely a result of American history. Every component of American life is influenced by race because the country was created and still thrives off of the construction of it. Her work reflects intersectionality because she focuses on the interconnected nature of her identity. Rooted in political and social histories, her practice aims to educate on the injustices in America. All of her pieces have a common theme of social and political expression that derives from her examination of self and her surroundings, and much of her art is created with the intention of her exploring history or expanding the awareness of her audience. She explores society and the way that the intersectionality of gender, race, and sexuality may alter one’s experience. 

In this exhibition, I would like to explore Xaviera Simmons’ use of intersectionality and landscape, and how she uses the input of her own experience, being a black woman, to create performing photographs of black women in nature. The works that I have included in this exhibition all have the common theme of identity and belonging like many of her pieces do. She brings the history of African American people’s existence in this country to light through these ten eye-opening photographs of black women and suceeds in expanding the perspective and enriching our knowledge of everything we thought we knew in history.

Learning about Xaviera Simmons for the Online Exhibition project gave me a different perspective on her life than I had prior to starting the project. Before starting, I did not know of her inspiration for her art or her previous traveling experiences. All I knew was what I saw in her artwork, which I interpreted based on my own experience since I had no knowledge of hers. Through research, I learned a new side of her as an artist and a person. I was able to step into her shoes and look at each of her works of art as if they were my own. I was able to understand why she may have made some of the creative choices that she did. Discovering more about Simmons through this project gave me a better understanding and appreciation for her work. I was able to look at her work with more of a critical eye than before because I knew what she may have been trying to achieve in the end. I feel as if most of the insight that I gained was from the research that I did beforehand. Some of the articles I read had comments from her, which helped me in not just understanding her point of view, but also her voice. Having a deeper understanding of the small things like her feelings on current events, and political stance all helped me in determining the best photos to represent her in the exhibition.

Xaviera Simmons is an African American that comes from a lineage of Georgia sharecroppers. Her family’s history has a big impact on her artwork, so it was important for me to understand where she is from and how she feels about where she is from. Political, social, historical, and artistic history and events inform our understanding of artwork because they paint a picture of the artist’s potential influences for creating the artwork. I knew that politically, she is tired of the injustice that comes with being black in America and wants to educate through her work. Socially, she feels that the caste system that is driven by race in this society needs to be dismantled. Historically, she does not know what country in Africa her ancestors are from because it was taken away from her during slavery and that bothers her. 

Overall, through Xaviera Simmons’ artwork, we learn that the subject she is most interested in exploring is her own identity. She is a bold artist who expresses herself through the conversational pieces that she creates. Her overarching goal includes trying to expand the narrative of American history by putting an emphasis on African American history. Her identity continues to influence her work, and she is able to use her intersectionality to represent the unique experience of being American while being the descendant of an enslaved person. The insight that I gained from this experience was different than what I would have got otherwise because by curating the exhibition, I was able to get hands-on interaction with the material.

Citations

“Dana Scruggs, Nyadhour, Elevated, Death Valley, California, 2019.”

   ELEPHANT, 24 July 2019, elephant.art/iotd/dana-scruggs-

   nyadhour- elevated-death-valley-california-2019-24072020/.

Latria, Graham. “Xaviera Simmons: Multi-Media Artist.” ELYSIAN

   Magazine, 21 July 2020, readelysian.com/exploring-and-troubling-

   the-boundaries-with-xaviera-simmons/.

“Salt 4: Xaviera Simmons.” Utah Museum of Fine Arts, 26 Feb. 2012,

   centralpt.com/upload/417/18782_salt4_XavieraSimmons_essay.pdf.

Simmons, Xaviera. Whiteness Must Undo Itself to Make Way for the

   Truly Radical Turn in Contemporary Culture. 2 July 2019,

   davidcastillogallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/7-Simmons-

   The-Art-Newspaper-July-2019.pdf.

Southern, Hannah. “Xaviera Simmons: ‘How Might Our Entire History

   Have Been Different...?": Broad Strokes Blog.” NMWA, 27 May 2020,

   nmwa.org/blog/xaviera-simmons-how-might-our-entire-history-

   have-been-different/.