Wigs (Portfolio) engages with the perception of sexualty and gender, and with concepts of beauty, disguise, and masquerade and raises questions such as…What guides the choices we make when it comes to clothing and hairstyle? What assumptions are commonly made about individuals based on their appearance? The placement of the wigs on the wall suggests that the viewer consider how one might form a different persona, create a new narrative, or explore an alternate history through the selection of a particular wig.
In fact, Simpson purchased these wigs from Brooklyn-area wig shops, selecting many different types to photograph, including a platinum blond wig from the 1950s, body pieces for men, and 2 small doll wigs from the turn of the century. The works are approximately life size, and are pinned to the wall and arranged almost as if one has wandered into a wig shop to see the display of available merchandise.
Both hair and felt are soft, pliable, and tactile, and the use of this material lends the work a sculptural, 3-dimensional quality. Simpson began working with felt in the early 1990s, and in this instance, the materiality of the felt enhances the perceived texture of the hair. Wigs (Portfolio) features 21 pictures of wigs printed on felt rather than the traditional printmaking or photographic paper. Instead, she presents us with an array of wigs, which act as stand-ins, or surrogates for the figure. Simpson’s piece included in 30 Americans, Wigs (Portfolio), 1994, eliminates not only the face, but the entire body. In drawings and collages from the late-2000s, Simpson invents colorfully expressive, fantastical hairstyles, which appear to represent the vast breadth of moods, personalities, and inner desires existing within individuals, which may or may not be apparent to others. In photographs from the 1980s and early 1990s, Simpson leaves out the face in images of women and men posed and seen from the front or the back-their body position, clothing, and hairstyle, along with accompanying text panels, the only clues given that may help identify a subject. Over the years, her early photographs, and later drawings, collages, and films, have evolved to examine how perception of identity is tied to appearance however, her works often do not include the figure in the traditional sense. From the start of her post-grad career in the late 1980s, Simpson’s interest has focused around the subject of the body and identity, as seen through the lens of race and sexuality. Born in 1960, New York-based artist Lorna Simpson studied photography at the New York School of Visual Arts and attended graduate school on the West coast at the University of California San Diego.
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