Marlon Munoz
Prof. Hugo Fernandez
Art in NY-195.1386
April 14, 2006
Essay Review#2: Whitney Museum: Lorna Simpson exhibition
The title of the exhibition was called Lorna Simpson and it took place at the
Whitney Museum located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, New York. The Lorna
Simpson exhibition traces her career from the mid 1980s to the present, showing
Simpson’s graceful balance between the poetic and the political, the ambiguous and the
specific. Simpson’s photographs, videos, and films present a critical examination of
history, memory, culture, race and gender. For more than twenty years, Lorna Simpson
has used images and text, and more recently film and dialogue, to create open-ended
narratives. Formally elegant and subtly provocative, Simpson’s early work is an
unsentimental exploration of photographic subjectivity. The figure becomes the locus for
questioning the way gender and race shade the interactions, relationships and experiences
of our lives. In the 1990s the artist’s focus shifted from social and cultural critique into
more personal of intimate territory, marking her growing interest in narrative. Simpson’s
recent film and video works continues this dialectic of performance and spectatorship,
while plumbing the mysteries of identity and desire. The way that this exhibition has
been designed it’s completely amazing. There are rooms for short video film playing and
a vast of photographs in every wall, each holding its own and unique meaning and
message. Lorna Simpson’s major themes are the situation of black women in society; she
shows them at times as victims, sometimes as protagonists, and often as survivors.
Through concern for their lack of identity, she focuses on attempts to articulate the
experience of these anonymous women, hoping that through the images viewers will be
able to share and thereby begin to understand, their view of the world.
One of Lorna Simpson’s photographs is called “Water bearer 1968” made in
gelatin silver print and vinyl lettering. This is an anti-portrait which means face not
shown. The inspiration behind this photograph is not clear. But, certainly it deals with
gender issues. Moreover, the dialogue below the photograph says “She saw him
disappear by the river; they asked her to tell what happened, only to discount her
memory”. In other words, this fragment might be addressing a killing of someone whose
body is thrown in the river so that nobody could find it. And, the witness says what she
has seen, but nobody believes her. The message that it is being conveyed here is a gender
issue. Also, as we can see in the photograph there is a woman holding a shiny metal jar in
her left hand. And, in the other hand she is holding a regular plastic gallon. The
interpretation of this photograph might be that there will always be an unbalance and an
inequality for women in society.
This photograph represents an art that everybody should know about, which is equality.
To conclude Lorna Simpson has that touch in her photographs that makes people ask
question and at the same time answer them.
Another photograph from Lorna’s exhibition was “You Are Fine, 1988” it was
med with four colored polar prints, fifteen plastic plaques, and twenty-one ceramic pieces
(19 letters and 2 apostrophes.) These prints suggest that black woman should have a great
physical appearance to get an ordinary job. Once again, the theme in these prints is the
gender issues. As we can see in the prints, there is a woman laying down in what it seems
to be a medical bed. The woman is black wearing and plain white dress used for patients.
But, she has a nice body shape. But, all she is looking for is a secretary position.
This prints caught my attention because in my opinion it has a double meaning. For
instance, why did black women have to go through medical procedures just to get an
ordinary job? During Lorna Simpson’s time, they must have been hard due to the
oppression of women during those times.
An additional and last photograph that caught my attention was “Gestures/
Reenactments, 1985” it was made of six gelatin silver prints and seven text mounted on
foam care. In these pictures we can see a black male in different poses. Under each
picture there is some excerpt that comes from an unknown source. One of the excerpts
says “For the past six months work this week is temp high risk or low pay Mr. Johnson
walks out” Ever though, these excerpt comes from an unknown source, it is talking about
minimal wages. In other works, laborers have to work harder or else they’ll get fire. In
conclusion, Lorna Simpson knows what needs to be put under every print and each
caption added has its own meaning.
The Lorna Simpson exhibition was interesting. First of all, I learned a lot about
her, her background, and her fight through her art. Also, she has mastered the art of
photograph that helped her express in her own way. I was not interested in the quality of
the prints so much, but what caught my attention was that little piece of history each print
is hiding from us.