15 Mouths

Since the mid-1980s, Lorna Simpson has made art that explores and challenges conventions about identity, gender, history, memory, and culture.  Simpson’s conceptual photography often links images with text to create works that both intrigue and perplex: the meanings of her works are never straightforward. In the print portfolio 15 Mouths, Simpson pairs closely cropped images of lips with ambiguous phrases such as, “uncontrollably loud” and “immeasurably deep.” The portfolio is arranged in a dispersed, site-specific configuration, inviting viewers into their own creative processes of reading and looking while thwarting the possibility of discovering any one underlying narrative. This work, as in many others in Simpson’s oeuvre, requires the viewer to participate actively, if inconclusively, in its interpretation.