Lorna Simpson talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Simpson was born in Brooklyn, New York, 1960. Her conceptual approach to photography, and image-making more widely, reflects a desire to subvert the conventional framing of different forms of identity.
Lorna Simpson's Woman on a Snowball (2018) © Lorna Simpson. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Installation View ‘Untitled, 2020. Three perspectives on the art of the present’ at Pinault Collection – Punta della Dogana, 2020 © Palazzo Grassi, photo: Marco Cappelletti.
From her early photo-text works to her recent paintings using found images, Simpson has explored the complexity of representation, and the visual and textual languages with which it is constructed. While she is deeply engaged with societal issues and historical inequities, and with the camera’s time-honoured role as a documentary instrument, she blurs boundaries between reality and fiction, between witnessing and storytelling. The result is a practice that is precise and yet elusive, spare and yet capacious.
A detail of Lorna Simpson's Tried by Fire (2017) Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Installation view, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Pinault Collection – Punta della Dogana, Venice. Photo: James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
Simpson discusses how she achieves a balance between refusal and engagement to allow space for the viewer to enter her work. She talks about the role of the archive and history and how she navigates the use of existing images through various media. She reflects on her constant need to test herself through her work.
From left to right: Lorna Simpson's For or by the eyes (2023) and Third Person (2023) Installation view, Lorna Simpson. Third Person, 2026, Pinault Collection – Punta della Dogana, Venice. Photo: James Wang © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection
She recalls the immense importance of discovering the work of David Hammons, how an exhibition of Francisco de Zurbarán at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York influenced her approach to image-making, and her connection to artists from Isaac Julien to Terry Adkins and Wangechi Mutu. She reflects on the importance of literature and writers including Robin Coste Lewis and Audre Lorde to her practice. And she discusses the vital importance of the films of Chantal Akerman. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Lorna Simpson, Pinault Collection – Punta della Dogana, Venice, until 22 November
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture platform. Bloomberg Connects offers access to a vast range of international cultural organisations through a single click, with new guides being added regularly. They include several US museums in which Lorna Simpson has had solo exhibitions, from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Contemporary Art Museum in St Louis, and, in New York, the Met Fifth Avenue, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Studio Museum, Harlem. Explore Bloomberg Connects and you will find that the guide to the Studio Museum features extensive content on the museum’s new building, which opened at the end of 2025, including Harlem Inspired, in which cultural figures connected to the neighbourhood discuss the museum in the context the “four pillars” on which the new building was constructed: the Street, the Sanctuary, the Stage and the Stoop. You can also hear in-depth audio about From Now: A Collection in Context, the evolving displays of the holdings of the Studio Museum, with curators and educators discussing the themes of the displays and key works within them.
