Biography

Xaviera Simmons’ sweeping art practice includes photography, painting, video, sound, sculpture, text, installation and performance. She is a public intellectual, as well as an esteemed writer, lecturer and editor.  Her work engages the formal histories of art through her studio's expansive use of materials. The work’s themes are often rooted in both aesthetic and formal inquiries and in the construction of landscape, language, image, and the complex histories of the United States and its continuing empire-building, internally and on a global scale. 

Simmons 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, NY. 

Recent solo exhibitions include Nectar at Kadist, Paris; The Structure, The Labor, the Pause at Sarasota Art Museum; Convene at Sculpture Center, New York; Overlay at Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University; The Gold Miner’s Mission to Dwell on the Tide Line at The Museum of Modern Art- The Modern Window, New York; and CODED at The Kitchen, New York. She has participated in recent group exhibitions at museums including The Momentary at Crystal Bridges, Bentonville; Desert X, Palm Desert; Sprengel Museum Hannover; The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro; MassArt, Boston; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Seattle Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Nasher Museum of Art, Durham; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; Prospect.4, New Orleans; Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan; Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Cincinnati Art Museum; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, among others. Simmons’ work has been featured and reviewed in many publications; most recently in ArtNews, The Art Newspaper, Artnet News, Artforum, Hyperallergic, New York Magazine, Bloomberg, Paper Magazine, The New York Times and others. 

Simmons’ works are in major museum and private collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Deutsche Bank, New York; UBS, New York; The Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Agnes Gund Art Collection, New York; The De La Cruz Collection, Miami; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Studio Museum in Harlem; ICA Miami; Perez Art Museum Miami; The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro; The Nasher Museum of Art, Durham; The High Museum, Atlanta, among many others. She has held teaching positions at Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University and The School Of The Art Institute, Chicago. 

In Spring 2020 she was awarded the prestigious The Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College. Simmons is a recipient of Socrates Sculpture Park’s Artist Award (2019), Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Award (2018), as well as Denniston Hills’ Distinguished Performance Artist Award (2018). Recent solo exhibitions include “Crisis Makes a Book Club” at the Queens Museum, NY (2023) and “Nectar” at KADIST Paris. For the 2021 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, Simmons served as the first guest editor of Art Basel Magazine, has written for The Art Newspaper and whose artworks and writings will be featured in the upcoming The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience. 

The artist has exhibitions, performances and projects slated to open globally through 2027.