Xaviera Simmons

Artist Xaviera Simmons talks to host Will Corwin about her installation, Superunknown, in the front gallery of P.S.1's Greater New York 2010 exhibition. She touches on some pretty poignant issues facing artists in the Internet/YouTube age--how does one collect images and imbue them with meaning? Much of her work emanates from a two-year-long walking pilgrimage undertaken with a group of Buddhist monks following the slave trade along the eastern seaboard, down to the Florida keys, to Cuba and finally to Africa. Xaviera made an installation at the Nasher Museum at Duke University in which she gathered images and commissioned musician friends, largely from Williamsburg (including Les Savy Fav) to compose music inspired by the images, and made a vinyl album from it. (24 minutes)

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