Xaviera Simmons

She was in exhibitions such as the "Live Dangerously" exhibition at the National Museum for Women in the Arts[5], the Platform section (large scale works) of the 25th Armory Show 2019[6], "Xaviera Simmons: Sundown" at David Castillo Gallery[7], in "When Home Won't Let You Stay" at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston[8].

She is outspoken in the art world beyond her visual practice, writing a critical comment article for The Art Newspaper entitled "Whiteness must undo itself to make way for the truly radical turn in contemporary culture"[9] and pulling out as a panelist at a New Museum festival when local Bronx organizers shut it down with their concerns[10]. Her article was quoted (with her permission) in artist William Powhida's first solo art exhibition in five years at Postmasters Gallery.

Simmons's sculpture has been displayed at the Hunter's point south park in Queens. Along the shore of the East River, there are multiple canoes overturned, with their backs painted in bright colors. The colors she uses represent the flags of the nations of the immigrant communities that live in Queens, making it one of the most diverse boroughs of New York City. Keeping in mind the Trump administration, this piece takes on more relevance.[11]

Coded was a survey exhibition at The Kitchen.[12] In relation to the exhibition, Simmons also created a performance work that uses archival materials and resources to explore queer history, homoeroticism, and Jamaican dancehall culture.[13][14]

Drawing on Simmons's practice as a multidisciplinary artist, Underscore was staged at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, where she presented two photographs, a slide installation, and a site-specific performance titled Number 17. Each of these components drew upon elements of both live and recorded music: the photographs Warm Leatherette (2009) and Horse (2009) used familiar LP covers as masks for her characters, the slide installation Into the Rehearsal were digitzed manipulations of low-resolution images from Jamaican dance-hall footage (the popular form of dance called daggering is specifically referenced) pooled from the Internet, and Number 17 transformed the museum's Opatrny Gallery into a space for Simmons to construct improvised visual/sound performances coupled with high-endurance practices and action painting.[15]

Simmons was a participant in the Artists Experiment series at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She acted as both artist and archivist, tracing the museum's own history, while extracting and reinstating examples of political action through gesture.[16]

Simmons's Index series captured images of quasi-human torsos oriented at eye level: these forms were composed of ephemera such as rosaries, postcards, crushed photographs, and jewelry scraps, funneled into pairs of blue jeans and printed leggings.[17] These works are, effectively, stills of constructed bodies bearing traces of the real world, but inhabiting a unique space just beyond it. They are archives channeled into a body, reflecting the actual body's ability to document and store away memory and experience.

Commissioned by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University as part of their 2010 exhibition The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, Simmons collaborated with a group of artists to produce a hybrid landscape photography-music installation. Simmons traveled and explored the varying topographies of North Carolina over a ten-day period; the images she took would serve as "album covers" for songs recorded by artists such as My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Superchunk's Mac McCaughan, and TV On the Radio members Kyp Malone, Tunde Adebimpe, and Jaleel Bunton. Durham-based record label Merge Records served as the music producer.[18]

Public Art Fund's program for emerging artists, In the Public Realm, commissioned Simmons to produce a three-week project in June 2008, using the streets of the Bronx as a space for sidewalk games, classic photographic portraiture, and performance art. Passersby were encouraged to participate in various activities including hopscotch, soapbox speaking, chess, and Double Dutch. Simmons provided props and background elements, against which all of the publics' spontaneous activities were recorded. Color portraits were sent directly back to participants, as a way of completing the process of active, creative participation.[19]