David Castillo Gallery is proud to present Index Seven, a solo exhibition by Xaviera Simmons.

In Xaviera Simmons’ Index Composition photographs, signifier and signified are partitioned on these expressive figures by a bolt of fabric sheathing their upper halves, creating the sensation of two continents.  In Simmons’ figures, objects and images found, borrowed, and possessed by the artist accumulate with the sculptural density of forest canopies: totems and trophies; raffia and lace; Polaroids and clippings; rings and clothespins; dried kelp and coconut skin; feathers and reeds; fruits and fetishes; gourds, nets, baskets, braids.

The subaltern speaking from the photographic documentation of Index Seven advocates accountability to public histories, social relations, and the production of difference. This body of work constructs sculptures inside of photographs, using the language of sculpture in an image and creating a cinematic landscape inside of the image.

Simmons’ interventions upon full portraiture stand upright like architectural columns, the other in a nuanced movement toward orientating attention outside of consumption and appropriation.

Xaviera Simmons’ work will be on view in the upcoming NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection as well as in the UBS Lounge at Art Basel Miami Beach. Among her many group exhibitions currently on view are Reality of My Surroundings: The Contemporary Collection at the Nasher, Durham and Philodendron: From Pan-Latin Exotic to American Modern at the Wolfsonian Museum, Miami Beach. The artist 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 include Archive As Impetus at The Museum Of Modern Art; Underscore at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum; 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, ICA Miami, and Perez Art Museum Miami.