Born: 1982

Hometown: Queens, NY

Lives and Works: Brooklyn, NY

Facebook: http://facebook.com/#!/xavierasimmons

Education: Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York, NY, 2005
Maggie Flanigan Studio, 2-Year Actor Training Conservatory, New York, NY, 2005
BFA, Photography, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 2004

About The Artist

Xaviera Simmons is an artist, a musician, and a historian. Working in diverse media such as photography, sculpture, performance, audio, and video, Simmons—by creating narratives that speak to the artist’s personal history as an African-American female—is able to explore themes of race, folklore, and Americana.

A descendant, in part, of an art historical lineage that includes Claude Calhoun and Cindy Sherman, Simmons often inserts herself as subject in her work. Decked out in costumes that reference the attire of slaves on plantations, desperate housewives in kitchens, and vaudeville performers donning blackface, Simmons deposits herself in desolate, isolated landscapes. The resulting pieces, which are both highly personal and politically charged, generate questions about the identity of both African Americans and females as they have been visually depicted in history.

Simmons is a native New Yorker who was educated at both Bard College and the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX; SculptureCenter, Long Island City, NY; and, most recently, at the Greater New York show at MoMA PS1 in 2010.

Artist Q&A

1. When did you first realize you wanted to be an artist?
There hasn’t been a time when I wasn’t making artwork and I’ve pretty much always known that it was the job for me. Well, that and becoming a midwife have always competed; but I had a lot of nurturing to be whatever it was I wanted to be as I was growing up.
2. If not yourself, who would you want to be?
I would be this nomadic woman with a large family who really embodied the teachings of the spiritual masters, who made music that combined the sounds of Susana Baca, D’Angelo, Sade and Metallica, designed and wore clothes like Rick Owens and Mara Hoffman and had the swaggers of James Hetfieild (of Metallica), Jay Z, Mary J Blige and Nina Simone. She would practice midwifery and have the writing skills of Luc Sante and Toni Morrison and have the capabilities of a sustainable organic farmer, industrial designer, carpenter, master chef, and a contemporary architect.
3. What’s your preferred drink?
A really funky/earthy/mineraly Argentine Malbec, poured by my boyfriend Benjamin, with a side of bitters and soda in our Paris apartment.
4. What’s your guilty pleasure?
Yearly trips to Jamaica, massively huge cell phone bills to Paris where my partner lives and of course reality TV programming, especially The Real Housewives of every single city (except New Jersey), RuPaul’s Drag Race and Drag U and this wacky show called Man V Food.
5. What would you want your last meal on earth to be?
An Ethiopian food extravaganza cooked by my best friend Tizita’s mother.

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Galleries

David Castillo, Miami, FL

Nicole Klagsbrun, New York, NY

Select Permanent Collections

The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC

The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL

The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY

The Agnes Gund Art Collection, New York, NY