Nzinga simone
Independent curator & Art historian
Nzinga Simmons is a curator and PhD candidate in Art History at Duke University, specializing in the work of Black contemporary artists engaging with new media. Her dissertation examines a select group of Black artists whose practices challenge the perceived neutrality of digital technologies, highlighting how these tools often reflect and perpetuate hegemonic ideologies. In contrast to the growing body of discourse critiquing the harmful effects of technology, Simmons' research offers innovative perspectives on how marginalized communities can use emergent technologies to assert their agency both online and offline. Before pursuing graduate studies, Simmons held curatorial fellowship positions at the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Zuckerman Museum of Art in Kennesaw, Georgia.It is my goal to prompt meaningful encounters with art that transform the way we see ourselves, the world, and its possibilities.
work
Exhibitions
UNBOUND at the Zuckerman Museum of ArtUNBOUND examines black artists whose work takes an inventive and experimental approach to abstraction. Multigenerational in scope, the exhibition considers the history of black abstraction from the mid century to the contemporary moment. It examines the way artists Romare Bearden, Sam Gilliam, Joe Overstreet, and Eric N. Mack, Anthony Akinbola, Krista Clark, and Tariku Shiferaw diverge from a collectivist black-ideological norm centered on figuration, and expand the boundaries of painting as a medium through innovative use of form and material. UNBOUND offers an inquiry into the complex intersections between the history of abstraction, identity politics, and black artistic production.The exhibition and accompanying publication presents the opportunity to deeply examine artists of the African Diaspora whose practice lie outside the bounds of figuration. It prompts a consideration of how ontological blackness can be represented without the depiction of a figure, and further, how avant garde forms of art can present new spaces of possibility in the ways that race, gender, and sexuality are expressed.
Publications
- Tariku Shiferaw, Artist Dossier, Art Papers, Spring 2020.
- Mildred Thompson, Artist Dossier, Art Papers, Winter 2019.
- Shelley Danzy Interview, ArtsATL, Spring 2020.
- Modern Art Notes Podcast feature, Summer 2020
UNBOUND, Exhibition Catalogue, Zuckerman Museum of Art, March 2020 (pictured left).Simone Leigh: Loophole of Retreat at the Guggenheim, Exhibition Review, Art Papers, Fall 2019.
Contact
Let’s talk art.
