Siddhartha Mitter, “Simone Leigh, in the World.” The New York Times, Apr 14, 2022.
Simone Leigh was on the phone from Venice. It’s not all here yet, she told me.
She had been installing her exhibition of bronzes and ceramics in the United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale — one of the most prestigious commissions in the art world, and the first time it has been awarded to a Black female artist. This edition of the Biennale had been delayed a year by Covid-19, and, Leigh reported, it has not been spared disruptions: “Satellite,” a 24-foot bronze female form with a concave disc for a head, destined for the forecourt of the Pavilion, was in transit, not certain to arrive in time for next week’s opening. (…)
Lorraine O’Grady, who at 87 is a pillar of the art world and a mentor to Leigh, said the younger artist refused to separate the audience that enables her work — Black women — from the market and institutions that consume it.
“Simone is certainly aware of all the other audiences out there, trust me,” O’Grady said. “But we’re talking about something very deep, which is the audience with whom you have interior conversations as you work, in order to shed light on issues that have received no light for centuries.”
Leigh’s October convening in Venice, “Loophole of Retreat,” aims to bring together hundreds of Black women from every continent, including O’Grady. It will build on an event by the same name in 2019 at the Guggenheim, one of Leigh’s proudest achievements. The title refers to the crawl space where Harriet Jacobs, author of the 1861 autobiography, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” avoided her enslaver for seven years while still observing the world and planning for freedom. (…)