Xaviera Simmons is one of the artists in ‘Body Doubles’, an exhibtion in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Until April 19 2015.
About:
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-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.
Index Three, Composition Four, 2012.
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, and The Sculpture Center. Selected solo and group exhibitions for 2013-2014 include Archive As Impetus at The Museum Of Modern Art; Underscore at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum; Open at David Castillo Gallery; Rehearsals at The Savannah College Of Art and Design; and Radical Presence” at The Studio Museum In Harlem 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, and Perez Art Museum Miami.
Untitled (Red), 2014.
Body Doubles:
Body Doubles raises complex questions about the relationship between the body and identity, and explores the myriad ways that artists have used the body to challenge boundaries—between the individual and society, male and female, interior and exterior, normal and transgressive. As the plurality of the exhibition’s title suggests, Body Doubles recognizes that the body is not fixed but rather in a perpetual state of flux and transformation. The exhibition explores two parallel ideas: first, that multiple bodies can perform one identity (akin to the role of the “body double” in cinema); and second, that multiple identities can exist within one body.
Untitled (Cpape), 2010.
Drawn largely from the MCA’s permanent collection, the exhibition features artists who highlight the body as an object (something that we have), the body as a subject (something that we are), and the body as an ongoing performance (something that we become). These contemporary artists use the body as a tool for radical transformation as reflected through the lenses of sexuality, gender, class, age, and race. They think about the body as a positive problem, or, to borrow Thomas Osborn’s words, as a “vehicle for thought and action.”
Indexe Five, Composition One, 2013.
Two cornerstones of the exhibition are Wu Tsang’s video installation, Mishima in Mexico (2012), a recent acquisition into the MCA’s permanent collection; and Lorna Simpson’s three-channel video installation Chess (2012), which makes its North American premiere. Body Doubles also includes works by Jean Arp, Valerie Belin, Jeanne Dunning, Robert Gober, Rashid Johnson, Gülsün Karamustafa, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Richard Prince, Christina Ramberg, Collier Shorr, Cindy Sherman, Xaviera Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Wu Tsang, and Gillian Wearing.
Body Doubles is organized by Michelle Puetz, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
