Flux Exchange: Xaviera Simmons
DETAILS
Ongoing
Xaviera Simmons’s body of work spans photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture and installation. She defines her studio practice as rooted in an ongoing investigation of experience, memory, abstraction, present and future histories – specifically shifting notions surrounding landscape, character development and formal processes. Simmons is committed equally to the examination of different artistic modes and processes; for example, she may dedicate part of a year to photography, another part to performance, and other parts to installation, video, and sound works – keeping her practice in constant and consistent rotation, shift, and engagement.
Simmons received her B.F.A. 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. Simmons has exhibited nationally and internationally where major exhibitions and performances include: The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, The Studio Museum In Harlem, The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Public Art Fund, The Sculpture Center, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, David Castillo Gallery and The Savannah College of Art and Design among many others.
Her works are in major museum and private collections including Deutsche Bank, UBS, The Guggenheim Museum, The Agnes Gund Art Collection, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Studio Museum in Harlem, MOCA Miami, The Nasher Museum Of Art at Duke University and The Perez Art Museum, Miami. Simmons is the recipient of significant and numerous awards including a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Art Grants to Artists Award for Visual Art. Simmons had multiple major solo and group exhibitions in 2016 including exhibitions and performances at The Museum of Modern Art, a curatorial project at the headquarters of Deutsche Bank, NY, and a building-wide performance and installation at The Kitchen NYC. Simmons is a 2015 Recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Memorial Foundation Award. Simmons lives and works in New York, NY.
