Artist Commissions: Xaviera Simmons
With support from Villa Albertine, the Ford Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Afro Charities partnered with KADIST to commission a new body of work by New York-based artist Xaviera Simmons.
During several months, Simmons conducted research in the AFRO American Newspapers’ photographic archives, selecting a core set of images that she would incorporate into a new suite of original photographs.
On May 5, 2022, Simmons’s work debuted in a solo exhibition called Nectar at KADIST’s venue in Paris, France. The exhibition is currently on view at Konsthall C in Stockholm, Sweden.
Xaviera Simmons’s sweeping practice of photography, painting, video, sound, sculpture, text and installation engages the construction of landscape, language, and the complex histories of the United States and its continuing empire building internally and on a global scale. Simmons received her BFA from Bard College (2004) after spending two years on a walking pilgrimage retracing the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade with Buddhist Monks.
She completed the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art (2005) while simultaneously completing a two-year actor-training conservatory with The Maggie Flanigan Studio, NY. Simmons is a recipient of Socrates Sculpture Park’s Artist Award (2019), Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Award (2018), as well as Denniston Hills’ Distinguished Performance Artist Award (2018). Her work is included in numerous upcoming exhibitions and projects including Sundown at David Castillo Gallery, Miami, The Restless Earth curated by Massimiliano Gioni, at the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2019); Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places Commission (2018-2019), among many others.
Recent solo exhibitions include Convene at Sculpture Center, New York; Overlay at Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University; The Gold Miner’s Mission to Dwell on the Tide Line at The Museum of Modern Art - The Modern Window, New York; and CODED at The Kitchen, New York. Current and recent museum group exhibitions include The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro; MassArt, Boston; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Seattle Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Nasher Museum of Art, Durham; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; Prospect.4, New Orleans; Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan; Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Cincinnati Art Museum; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, among others. Simmons’ work has been featured and reviewed in many publications over the years, most recently in ArtNews, The Art Newspaper, Artnet News, Artforum, Hyperallergic, New York Magazine, Bloomberg, Paper Magazine, The New York Times and others.
Simmons’ works are in major museum and private collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Deutsche Bank, New York; UBS, New York; The Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Agnes Gund Art Collection, New York; The De La Cruz Collection, Miami, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Studio Museum in Harlem; ICA Miami; Perez Art Museum Miami; The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro; The Nasher Museum of Art, Durham; The High Museum, Atlanta; among others. She has held teaching positions at Harvard University, Yale University and Columbia University.
In spring 2020 she was awarded The Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College. The artist has exhibitions, performances and projects slated to open globally through 2023.
