There are many parts of the fearlessly experimental artist\u2019s practice to explore, all unified by the themes that preoccupy her, including \u201cthe conditions under which images emerge, the erosion and resurgence of memory, the fickle nature of narratives and their blind spots, or the dynamics of race, power and gender that shape our perceptions\u201d, to quote the show\u2019s curator, Emma Lavigne, in her introduction to its catalogue.<\/p>\n
12Lorna Simpson: Third Person<\/a><\/p>\n Simpson rose to fame in the late 1980s, garnering recognition for her bold, conceptual approach to photography. Her early works combine images of Black women, usually cropped or seen from behind to render the sitter anonymous, with ambiguous fragments of text. The artist\u2019s aim was to \u201cengage with the audience in a way they wouldn\u2019t be used to … to put them off balance,\u201d she once explained \u2013 something that remains a central tenet of her work.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the 90s and 2000s, Simpson expanded her practice to incorporate installation, film and video, building upon her interest in non-linear storytelling, in racialised histories and fragmented identities. But it was only in the 2010s that she arrived at drawing, collage and painting \u2013 the key components of Third Person. She had, in fact, studied painting as an undergraduate at the School of Visual Arts in New York, but deciding she couldn\u2019t paint as well as her peers, soon shunned it for photography. \u201cI found myself spending all my time taking photographs or in the dark room, really learning the craft,\u201d she recalls. So why the return to more manual mediums? \u201cI was at a point when I really loved making videos, but I wanted to find something that would allow me to sit and make something and move on. So I started doing ink drawings.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Collage followed \u2013 using the piles of vintage Ebony and Jet magazines that she\u2019d accumulated over the years, along with old newspaper archives. \u201cWhen friends see me make collages, they\u2019re like, \u2018Oh my god, the way your brain works, sorting and culling imagery, is not normal!\u2019\u201d Simpson laughs. \u201cI enjoy looking at images so much. There\u2019s so much out there that\u2019s surreal in itself, and just changing one element \u2013 but doing it in a way where I\u2019m not second-guessing myself or trying to impose a narrative … it\u2019s a nice way to unlock my imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n A large display of Simpson\u2019s collages, titled Unanswerable (2018), occupies one whole room of the show, allowing visitors a peek inside such processes. As is so often the case with Simpson\u2019s work, there is an oneiric absurdity to them \u2013 a deer with a woman\u2019s head lying on a bed; figures in domestic settings being engulfed by snow, fire, clouds. (Images that \u201crematerialise our belonging to the world\u201d, to use Lavigne\u2019s words, recur throughout the exhibition \u2013 from Arctic panoramas reconstructed from expedition archives, and often featuring spectral forms, to a sculpture of a giant snowball topped by a contemplative female figure, and stacks of Ebony and Jet magazines crowned with glass sculptures resembling oversized ice cubes.)<\/p>\n Simpson has never been afraid to take on new mediums, or to make mistakes, which is how she found herself back at painting decades after she decided she wasn\u2019t good at it \u2013 spoiler alert: she is. \u201cI\u2019m not one to rush with, \u2018Is this going to be good, or is this something you\u2019re going to show?\u2019 she says. \u201cThe end product is of the least interest. It\u2019s more about the process of letting go and seeing what happens.\u201d Her goal, she says, is to resist making assumptions about what she can or can\u2019t do. \u201cIt starts with a research process and, on a conceptual level, an idea. Then I try to back away from what it is I do \u2013 to not implement what I\u2019m used to doing \u2013 to solve that idea.\u201d<\/p>\n Whatever form the solution takes, however, it is always rooted in Simpson\u2019s love for photography and interest in modes of reproduction. Some of the show\u2019s most striking paintings, including Three Figures and Then and Now, are screenprints of photographs taken during the Detroit and Alabama race riots \u2013 but cropped, enlarged, and overlaid with ink and acrylic paint, which adds to the sense of chaos and violence.<\/p>\n<\/a>
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Lorna Simpson\u00a9 Bottega Veneta, March 2026<\/p>\n<\/a>
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Lorna Simpson, Ghost Note, 2021\u00a9 Lorna Simpson; courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth; photo by James Wang<\/p>\n
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Lorna Simpson, Woman on a Snowball, 2018Artwork: \u00a9 Lorna Simpson, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Installation View: \u00a9 Palazzo Grassi, photography Marco Cappelletti<\/p>\n