2019-08-01 Essence

(^) C
U L T U R E
Simpson notes
that daily
life is becoming a
“heightened,
inhospitable
condition.”
THE ARTIST’S WAY
I
n 1986 Lorna Simpson created
“Waterbearer,” a large-scale photo-
graphic work of a woman wearing a
white shapeless dress. Her arms are
outstretched; her back and shoulders
are strong. Her face isn’t shown, only
brown skin, straight hair. With her left
hand, she pours water from a metal
pitcher; with her right she pours water
from a plastic jug. The words below the
woman say the following: “She saw him
disappear by the river, They asked her
to tell what happened, Only to discount
her memory.”
“Waterbearer” is one of Simpson’s
most famous works, and the concep-
tual artist, now 59, returns to its themes
time and again—Black womanhood,
life, memory and representation. When
Simpson started making her art, “rep-
resentation” was not the buzzword it
is now. Back then, popular culture re-
flected a world of Whiteness, hetero-
sexuality and middle-class comfort.
However, the Black feminist art of
Simpson—along with that of her peers
Carrie Mae Weems and Kara Walker—
widened this restrictive space, with
Simpson’s work being exhibited at or
acquired for the collections of the
Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney,
Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary
Art and the Venice Biennale.
Now, more than three decades
later, Simpson has decided to veer
decidedly left in response to a world
moving disturbingly right. As she
told The New York Times earlier this
year, “Dark times, to me, mean dark
paintings.” And in a literal interpreta-
tion of this belief, she has created a
series of pieces for an exhibition titled
Darkening. Although there are ele-
ments of collage—images from Ebony
magazine mixed with old black-and-
white photos from Arctic expedi-
tions—these are primarily large-
scale ink paintings. Simpson, who
painted in college, returned to the
medium in 2015.
Despite their jewel-toned beauty,
the paintings depict a place where one
would not want to live. Terrains appear
uninviting and unstable. Not surpris-
ingly, when discussing the series,
Simpson notes that daily life in Ameri-
ca is becoming a “heightened, inhospi-
table condition.” In this new work, she
has traded the stark messaging of
images like “Waterbearer” for some-
thing more abstract but no less bold.
There is also an absence of text.
However, the Darkening series is
framed by an excerpt from Robin
Coste Lewis’s poem “Using Black to
Paint Light: Walking Through a
Matisse Exhibit, Thinking About the
Arctic and Matthew Henson.” The
poem reads in part: Endless blueness.
White is blue. And: It makes me won-
der—yet again—was there ever such a
thing as whiteness? I am beginning to
grow suspicious. An open window.
For Simpson—who spoke about
her series with Thelma Golden, the
Studio Museum of Harlem director—
the poem is about “memory and time.
It’s about place, but it’s contemplating
a state of mind as well.” It’s a powerful
description of her work as well.
More than 30 years into her career, Lorna Simpson
continues to confront—and then disrupt through a range of
mediums—how gender, identity and culture are understood
BY AYANA BYRD
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ESSENCE.COM I 66 I SEPTEMBER 2019