For the past decade, Lorna Simpson's work has explored the role of hair as a marker of social identity. The 21 lithographic images in Wigs provide a taxonomy of hairstyles signifying gender, age, and race. The felt surfaces on which these images are printed present all of the hairstyles in the same texture, emphasizing and skewing our fixation on hair texture as markers of difference. By reminding us that wigs are hair that is unattached to a body, Simpson exposes hairstyle as an alterable or removable embellishment that may distort our understanding of what is natural or desirable in the human body. View Text Item

Lorna Simpson, based in New York, is an artist who works mostly with photography and film. She often pairs text and images to question the linear nature of storytelling and to complicate the relationship between words and pictures. In Wigs (portfolio), Simpson photographed 21 wigs of varying sizes, shapes, and textures. The differences in hairstyle allude to differences of race, gender, and age. The wigs also raise the subject of identification and misidentification, appearances and stereotypes. The images are paired with panels printed with short texts, such as the phrase "first impressions are the most lasting." One text is from the slave narrative of William Craft and describes his plan for escaping to freedom by having his wife masquerade as his white master.

Simpson was the Walker's Visual Artist-in-Residence in 1997-1998, during which time she made the film Recollection.

View Text Item