Xaviera Simmons
Image Description: A black artist wearing red pants, black boots, hoop earrings and a grey shawl sitting on a chair looking contemplative. There are wooden floors and in the background a computer sits on a table with multiple items and a mirror reflects a white person. To the right there is a lamp on top of a heater.
Xaviera Simmons‘ sweeping body of work includes photography, performance, choreography, video, sound, sculpture, and installation. 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’ works are in major museum and private collections. She was a visiting lecturer and the Solomon Fellow at Harvard University (2020) and has been awarded The Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College this summer. This fall and winter 2021 Simmons will have works on view at Desert X, Socrates Sculpture Park, NY, The Liverpool Biennial, Times Square, NY, Columbia University and The Moody Gallery at Rice University.