The Vision and Words of an American Photographer

The first European retrospective of Lorna Simpson arrives in Paris from May 28 until September 1, 2013 at the Jeu de Paume, a small museum in the 8th arrondissement of the city. This means that guests staying at one of the Sister Hotels Champs-Elysées can easily stop by to see Simpson's diverse body of work, ranging from photographs to texts. This American photographer may not be well known to many but her experimental use of various media will no doubt thrill any fan of modern art.

Lorna Simpson was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1960. For this artist, the combination of images and text was a profound and intimate part of the creative process. As such, she is considered to be a gifted writer as well as a talented artist. Even taken apart from the visual art that they accompany, Simpson's poems, short texts and portions of scripts could stand on their own as examples of extraordinary literary prowess.

However, Simpson never meant for her texts to be seen separately from their accompanying artwork. The message — both dynamic and fragile — that is created by the interaction between the two different elements is essential to her work. Interestingly, for her later works, Simpson began to use herself as a subject. To do this, she employed archived images that she reinvented to position herself within her own pieces.

This retrospective reveals Simpson's unique vision through photographs, texts and video installations. Simpson utilized both still and moving images to explore the performative nature of art. She also enjoyed evoking questions of identity, history, reality and fiction by using found objects, herself and any other subject that would challenge the spectator.