Xaviera Simmons '05 Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters

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Xaviera Simmons '05 Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters Xaviera Simmons’s sweeping body of work centers around photography and includes performance, choreography, video, sound, sculpture, and installation. Her interdisciplinary practice is rooted in shifting definitions of landscape; character development; art, political, and social histories; and the interconnectedness of formal processes. Simmons received her bachelor’s degree from Bard College after spending two years on a walking pilgrimage with Buddhist monks retracing the transatlantic slave trade. She completed the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art while simultaneously completing a two-year actor training with the Maggie Flanigan Studio. Simmons received Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Award and Denniston Hills’ Distinguished Performance Artist Award, both in 2018. Her work is part of 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); and Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places Commission (2018–19), among many others. Recent solo exhibitions include Convene at Sculpture Center, New York; Overlay at Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University; and The Gold Miner’s Mission to Dwell on the Tide Line, at Modern Window, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Current and recent museum group exhibitions include The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina; MassArt, Boston; Renaissance Society, Chicago; Seattle Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; 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; and Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco. Her work has been featured in many publications, most recently in Artforum, Artnet News, Bloomberg, Hyperallergic, New York Magazine, New York Times, Paper Magazine, and others. Her works are in major museum and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Guggenheim Museum, and Agnes Gund Art Collection, all in New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Studio Museum in Harlem; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and Rubell Family Collection, Miami, among others. https://afvs.fas.harvard.edu/people/xaviera-simmons .

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The Kitchen Center for Video, Music, Dance, Performance, Film, and Literature
The Kitchen Center for video, music, dance, performance, film, and literature Fall 2016 Season Upcoming Fall 2016 Upcoming Winter 2017 The Kitchen presents Sondra Perry: Resident Evil Philippe Quesne: La Mélancolie des November 2–December 10. dragons In 1971, Sun Ra said “Black people need a January 10–14, 8PM. $25. mythocracy, not a democracy because they’ll A band of longhaired metalheads decide that the never make it in history.…Truth is not snowy forest where their hatchback has stalled permissible for me to use because I’m not might be the perfect location to build a new righteous and holy, I’m evil, that’s because I’m heavy metal-themed amusement park. A help- black and I’m not subscribed to any types of ful stranger is invited into their world of classic righteousness.” Perry’s new video examines this rock, medieval recorders, and large inflatable active disinterest in the respectability that sculptures. An international audience favorite, blackness has been perpetually asked to earn by this three-dimensional poem is full of visual white culture. Using the lens of the Alien movie wonder, joy and melancholy, and sincere delight franchise—one which has been providing in human existence. Presented by The Kitchen allegories of colonialism and mutability for as part of The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Xaviera Simmons: CODED decades—Perry’s work asks: how do agents of Festival. power behave when their subjects become absolutely unpredictable, fluidly inhabiting Raúl De Nieves and Colin Self: The Fool societal norms in order to destroy them? Curated February 9–11, 8PM.
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MEDIA RELEASE The Studio Museum in Harlem 144 West 125th Street New York, NY 10027 studiomuseum.org/press Contact: Liz Gwinn, Public Relations and Publications Manager [email protected] 646.214.2142 Opening Reception and Press Preview: 6–8 pm, Friday, September 24, 2010 RSVP: [email protected] 212.864.4500 x255 The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Goethe-Institut New York Announce OFF/SITE Pioneering year-long collaboration begins September 24 with Xaviera Simmons: junctures (transmissions to) Xaviera Simmons in studio, 2009, Image courtesy Chris Sanders NEW YORK, September 10, 2010 —The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Goethe-Institut New York are joining forces for an innovative one-year collaboration: OFF/SITE. This unique partnership between two culturally specific institutions features artist projects and public programs in two iconic New York City neighborhoods, Harlem and the East Village. OFF/SITE synthesizes the missions, histories and mandates of both institutions. The Studio Museum and the Goethe-Institut New York share a commitment to specific places, cultures and experiences as well as to global engagement with contemporary art and ideas. They are uniquely suited to co-present a series of exhibitions, perfor- mances, panels and screenings that interrogates concepts including geography, site-responsiveness, community and artistic practice. Xaviera Simmons: junctures (transmissions to), OFF/SITE’s inaugural project, will be on view at the Goethe-Insti- tut Wyoming Building from September 24 to October 27, 2010. A public program featuring Simmons and junctures (transmissions to) collaborators will take place at the Studio Museum at 7 pm on Thursday, October 21.
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Xaviera Simmons XAVIERA SIMMONS’S body of work spans photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture and installation. She defines her studio practice, which is rooted in an ongoing investigation of experience, memory, abstraction, present and future histories-specifically shifting notions surrounding landscape, character development and formal processes, as cyclical rather than linear. In other words, 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 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. 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. Selected upcoming solo and group exhibitions for 2015 include: Accumulations, Light Work Syracuse, Foto, Annin Arts, London, Number 16, Kemper Museum Of Art, Kansas City, Radical Presence, Yerba Buena Center For The Arts, San Francisco, Where Do We Migrate To, Vamlands Museum, Sweden and When The Stars Begin To Fall, ICA Boston.
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