Guarded Conditions, 1989.
Eighteen color Polaroid prints, twenty-one engraved plastic plaques, and seventeen plastic letters. 91 x 131 in.(23I.I x 332.7)
Lorna Simpson first became well-known in the mid-1980s for her large-scale photograph-and-text works that confront and challenge narrow, conventional views of gender, identity, culture, history, and memory. With unidentified figures as a visual point of departure, Simpson uses the figure to examine the ways in which gender and culture shape the interactions, relationships, and experiences of our lives in contemporary America.