One of the leading artists of her generation, Lorna Simpson first became well known in the mid-1980s, confronting and challenging conventional views toward gender, identity, culture, history, and memory with large-scale photograph and text works that are formally elegant and subtly provocative. The artist often focused on the figure, shown either faceless or with the body cropped, combined with fragments of text that confound the viewer’s expectations of narrative and identity. By the mid-90s, Simpson began to concentrate on creating large multi-panel photographs printed on felt. The softly sensual images depict urban locales as the site of public, yet unseen, couplings. More recently, the artist has turned to creating moving images. In film and video works such as Call Waiting, she features couples engaging in intimate yet incomplete conversations that elude easy interpretation but seem to plumb the mysteries of identity and desire.

This is the first mid-career survey of Simpson’s work to date and provides a comprehensive examination of her photographs and films. It includes approximately seventeen of her acclaimed image and text works (1985–92); seven major photographs on felt (1994–98); six film installations from 1997 to 2004, such as Call Waiting, Interior/Exterior, Full/Empty, a seven-part projection and related series of photographs, and 31, a video calendar; and a selection of recent work.