Manuel Mandujano: Lorna Simpson Post

Lorna Simpson is an artist that uses a lot of different means to get her point across. Because she was taught by artists in the photo, video, and literary worlds, she is able to incorporate her ideas and messages through all of these means. Simpson uses her art to express the issues that present themselves into society. Several examples of this are her video clip “Easy to remember” (referring to 9/11) and the pieces titled “Public Sex” (referring to the AIDS epidemic). Lorna Simpson expresses the dilemmas that she is most affected by, and one can see this in her art.

A lot of Lorna Simpson’s art has a black and white contrast. This obviously gives her work an element of mystery/ darkness, or at the very least a sense of negativity. I feel that Lorna Simpson does this because she is not only commenting on the state of society or politics, but critiquing it as well. An interesting point to make is that, unlike many of the other female artists we have studied before, all of her art is not directly focused towards some form of the feminist movement. While she tries to critique the way the world views women, it is not the only topic she touches base on. Also, she branches out of her own race and incorporates people of many ethnicities in her art, which initially got her much criticism.

The photo I chose is Lorna Simpson’s “Lo/ve”. I thought this was interesting because the word “love” is divided and covering the eyes, or the “windows to the soul”. This description alone makes the piece sound optimistic and happy, however it is a black and white photo, and none of the four faces are smiling, giving the image a dark and eerie feeling to it.