Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing

Floor 5

Born 1983 in Santa Fe, NM
Lives in Santa Clara Pueblo, NM

In Rose B. Simpson’s Daughters: Reverence, four figures gaze at one another, creating a kind of force field of protection and solidarity that stands in contrast to an unstable world. “My lifework,” Simpson has explained, “is a seeking out of tools to use to heal the damages I have experienced as a human being of our postmodern and postcolonial era—objectification, stereotyping, and the disempowering detachment of our creative selves through the ease of modern technology.” Not only are the figures imbued with strength through their formal relationship to each other and through the implied shared ancestry in the work’s title, but also through the symbolic details adorning them. For example, the artist has said the plus signs represent direction and guidance. This work continues Simpson’s practice of making larger-than-life clay sculptures that are often abstracted portraits, a process the artist has described “as an act of witnessing in [the artist’s] community.”