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| A closeup of a photo installation by Lorna Simpson at the Brooklyn Museum |
I recently had a chance to see
Lorna Simpson: Gathered, now on display in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. With
Gathered, the artist
brings together unidentified photographs of African American women to create compelling narratives. According to the show's didactic, "
Lorna Simpson: Gathered presents works that explores this Brooklyn-born artist's interests in the interplay between fact and fiction, identity and history. Through works that incorporate hundreds of original and found vintage photographs of African Americans that she collects from eBay and flea markets, Lorna Simpson undermines the assumption that archival materials are objective documents of history."
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| Lorna Simpson's installation of vintage photo booth pictures |
On one wall of the exhibition space, tiny vintage photo booth pictures of African American women are displayed in wooden frames, and spaced out so that when the viewer stands back, they almost look like a cloud. There are also small abstract ink pieces painted by the artist floating in between the photographs which are meant to represent the mystery of who these women are and what their lives were like. They are compared to that feeling of curiosity and loss one has when going through an old photo album and finding bits of paper and glue where pictures have been torn out. What piece of the puzzle is missing?
