Giving Compass' Take:

· Christina Sharpe talks with artist Lorna Simpson about the impact of her work concerning race, gender and identity. Simpson recently received recognition for her work with the annual SMFA Medal presented by the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts University.

· In what ways does art influence society? What is its impact?

· Learn how art is used as an advocacy tool for youths to transform the education system.

Lorna Simpson, a pioneering visual and conceptual artist whose striking work on race, gender and identity has placed her among the leading artists of her generation, was recently honored by the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts University with the SMFA Medal, given annually in recognition of creative excellence in visual art, art history and arts advocacy. Simpson’s works have been presented in many of the world’s major art museums. Much of Simpson’s work focuses on experimenting and discovering new ways to develop imagery.

By the time I got out of college, I was really questioning what I was doing with photography. I had opportunities to show; I had looked at a lot of work, and the way that work was being presented by photographers, but I kind of felt there was some assumption that was being made about how these images were being read. That got me to think about a different way of viewing an image with meaning.

“The Waterbearer” actually comes from a memory of my father’s relatives – my father was from Cuba and Jamaica – and how they would talk about their days between Jamaica and Cuba, and just different family events that there was a lot of secrecy around. In those stories, and in the conveyance of memories, I noticed there was a lot stopping short, or a tendency not to fill in all the blanks. There also was the consideration that memory is a contentious situation in a way, so that what one wants to voice in terms of memory doesn’t always get acknowledged. I think “The Waterbearer” was a contemplation about that.

Read the full interview about the creative art process by Christina Sharpe at The Conversation.