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The Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College, Socrates Sculpture Park Artist Award, Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Award, Denniston Hills’ Distinguished Performance Artist Award, Louis Comfort Tiffany Memorial Foundation Award, David C. Driskell Prize
According to Simmons gallerist, "she defines her studio practice, which is rooted in an ongoing investigation of experience, memory, abstraction, present and future histories-specifically shifting notions surrounding landscape-as cyclical rather than linear. In other words, Simmons is committed equally to the examination of different artistic modes and processes; for example, she may dedicate part of a year to photography, another part to performance, and other parts to installation, video, and sound works-keeping her practice in constant and consistent rotation, shift, and engagement."[3]
Personal life and education
Simmons was raised in New York City to a practicing Buddhist parent in an extremely creative and matriarchal atmosphere. Simmons has mentioned many times in lectures the unique mixture of being raised by Buddhists while also attending various denominations of the Black Church. Simmons traveled frequently to Bangor, Maine as a child and this mixture of New York City and rural Maine have formed many of the ideas inside of her work. Simmons has stated in her lectures and writings that she is a descendant of Black American enslaved persons, European colonizers and Indigenous persons through the institution of chattel slavery on both sides of her family's lineage.
The 2008 Public Art Fund's program for emerging artists commissioned Simmons to produce a three-week project. The project, Bronx as Studio, used the streets of the Bronx as a space for sidewalk games, classic photographic portraiture, and performance art. Passersby were encouraged to participate in various activities including hopscotch, soapbox speaking, chess, and Double Dutch. Simmons provided props and background elements, against which all of the publics' spontaneous activities were recorded. Color portraits were sent directly back to participants, as a way of completing the process of active, creative participation.[6]
She participated in the Artists Experiment series at the Museum of Modern Art in 2013. Simmons acted as both artist and archivist, tracing the museum's own history while extracting and reinstating examples of political action through gesture.[8]
Coded was a survey exhibition at The Kitchen in 2016.[9] In relation to it, Simmons also created a performance work using archival materials and resources to explore queer history, homoeroticism, and Jamaican dancehall culture.[10][11]
In 2018, Simmons made a public art installation on Hunter's Point South Park on the East River in Queens, New York. The installation, Convene, consisted of inverted canoes painted in the colors of the national flags of some immigrant populations in the area.[12]
In 2019, Simmon wrote an opinion piece for The Art Newspaper, with the title "Whiteness must undo itself to make way for the truly radical turn in contemporary culture."[13] She also pulled out as a panelist at IdeasCity Bronx, a New Museum festival, when local Bronx organizers shut it down with their concerns.[14]
In 2021, Simmon's work was featured in Polyphonic: Celebrating PAMM's Fund for African American Art, a group show at Pérez Art Museum Miami highlighting artists in the museum collection acquired through the PAMM Fund for African American Art, an initiative created in 2013. Along with Xaviera Simmons, among the exhibiting artists were Faith Ringgold, Tschabalala Self, Romare Bearden, Juana Valdez, Edward Clark, Kevin Beasley, and others.[15]
Simmons initiated an ongoing project entitled Reading Work (www.readingworkstudio.com) which engaged hundreds of individuals and collectives from across the United States in compensated reading and art-making. The project was funded by the Ford Foundation's Art for Justice grant. Simmons has stated that this project is non-linear and ongoing.
The Queens Museum commissioned a site specific solo exhibition in 2022 from Simmons. The title, "Crisis Makes a Book Club," comes from a conversation between Simmons and the artist Michael Rakowitz. The project was critically acclaimed with multiple reviews in the New York Times.[16][17]
After the show’s closing Simmons, who is an ardent supporter of artists rights, pushed back against The Queens Museum, the show’s host for violating her intellectual property by repurposing and adapting her large scale work "Align" for a separate unrelated exhibition without the artist's permission.[18]
In 2025 Simmons photographed her long time friend Tunde Adebimpe for his album "Thee Black Boltz".[19] Adebimpe previously recorded a song on Simmons' record, Thundersnow Road which is also the name of her studio.[20]
Permanent Public Art Commissions
2025: Marshall L. Davis Sr. African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, Miami-Dade County
Museum Acquisitions
Simmons' work is held in the following collections, among others:
Spaceworks was a not-for-profit organization developed by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs to help artists with affordable work space. The program provided performers with low cost hourly rehearsal space and visual artists with affordable studio space on an annual lease.[27]
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