Xaviera Simmons transplants diverse narratives into agrestal, engineered, and somatic landscapes. Conjuring photography, audio, sculpture, performance, and video, Simmons traverses assumptions surrounding place, time, the populations that activate given contexts, and the capacity of record and memory to alter perceptions thereof. Simmons grounds sociopolitical, personal, and art histories by testing them within the physical limits of experienced terrain. The result is the formation of non-linear narratives through manipulation, humor, observation and candor as unflappable as they are appropriative.
Simmons was born in and lives and works in New York. She received her BFA in photography from Bard College, and completed the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in Studio Art while also completing a two-year actor training conservatory with The Maggie Flanigan Studio. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at institutions nationally and internationally, including The Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum of Modern Art New York; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; The Sculpture Center, New York; Múcsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest; Zacheta National Art Gallery, Warsaw, Poland; and Art in General. Xaviera Simmons' works are in the collections of Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Guggenheim Museum, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, The High Museum Of Art, Atlanta, The Nasher Museum Of Art at Duke University, The Rubell Family Collection, The Studio Museum In Harlem, The Agnes Gund Art Collection and Deutsche Bank.