Simone Leigh

Simone Leigh (born 1967) is an American fine artist. Quotes Science fiction always makes thinking about the location of culture and the formation of identity more obvious. An Interview with Simone Leigh 21 May 2009 After living in New York for a while, especially raising a girl, you start to feel that you can handle anything The post-digital children, with their laptops, have missed out on a lot of cinema I realize that the privilege I have now means that I am going to live and other people are going to die I tried to uncover not only the forms of knowledge but knowledge production amongst Black women People sometimes think that the work of Black artists and thinkers is somehow opaque, but it’s because they aren't aware of its history I don't think that people are as aware of the long history of Black avant-garde filmmaking I still have this hope that if you live an ethical and honest life, you can win in the end—maybe not in your lifetime, but eventually One of the functions of racism in the art world has been to keep people in a place where you're somehow required to analyze it, to understand the systemic this and that and present a simplified explanation in your work explaining why someone is trying to oppress me just seems like a waste of my time.I call it racial kindergarten I don't believe that people don't understand white privilege and systemic racism. I think they willfully deny it, and it's really not my job to explain racism to white people CRITICAL FABULATION: SIMONE LEIGH IN CONVERSATION WITH SUSAN THOMPSON 15 October 2020 It seems that having a real humanity in the public sphere is often impossible, and so often black culture is cultivated in private I was largely ignored. And that really helped me because I feel like I was able to develop a lot of work as an artist in relative obscurity. And for me personally, that became a great source of strength I don't have an emotional attachment to something when it's being made, so it doesn't hurt so much when they fall apart anymore I think the most thing important things for Black women right now, for me, is to be disobedient, as much as possible. Almost everything is wrong for what is expected for the way of a Black woman... And if you're just really cantankerous, it can be helpful. I would also say there's no way to avoid a lot of hard work and trial and error Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum hosts a retrospective of Simone Leigh's work 6 November 2023 I hope that my work shows a more nuanced, more subtle, more bold, more complicated, and more varied representations of Black women Simone Leigh's work explores how Black women have been misrepresented in art and culture 30 November 2023 The generation before me … those black women got nothing. They did real work to get me here Simone Leigh's work at the ICA is an ode to Black womanhood 19 April 2023 External Links Simone Leigh