Books by Kellie Jones

Lorna Simpson (Phaidon Contemporary Artist Series)

by Suzan-Lori Parks, Thelma Golden, Kellie Jones

Photo-based artist and film-maker Lorna Simpson (b.1960) is considered to be one of the key representatives of African-American visual culture. Emerging in the 1980s, Simpson was, in 1993, the first African-American woman ever to show in the Venice Biennale and to have a solo exhibition in the 'Projects' series of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. She is also one of very few African-American artists ever to have exhibited at Documenta, as she did in both 1987 and 2002. Simpson's well-known fragmented photographs, combining images with fragments of text, create mysterious and quietly intriguing works that reflect the silence of a portion of society - African-American women - that is rarely if ever represented in art. She raises profound questions about how we represent, see and communicate with each other and ourselves.
Thelma Golden, Curator of Simpson's autumn 2002 exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, talks with the artist about the shift from her signature photographic work to more cinematographic and sculptural art. In her Survey, critic and scholar Kellie Jones places the work in the context of the history of African-American culture as well as the recent history of self-portraiture in art through photography and performance. Chrissie Iles, Curator of Simpson's film presentation at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2002), analyses in her Focus the artist's filmworks. The artist's fragmentary use of speech is paralleled in her Artist's Choice, an extract from Top Dog/UnderDog by contemporary African-American playwright Suzan Lori Parks, and in her project notes included in her Artist's Writings.

South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s

by Kellie Jones

Named a Best Art Book of 2017 by the New York Times and Artforum

In South of Pico Kellie Jones explores how the artists in Los Angeles's black communities during the 1960s and 1970s created a vibrant, productive, and engaged activist arts scene in the face of structural racism. Emphasizing the importance of African American migration, as well as L.A.'s housing and employment politics, Jones shows how the work of black Angeleno artists such as Betye Saar, Charles White, Noah Purifoy, and Senga Nengudi spoke to the dislocation of migration, L.A.'s urban renewal, and restrictions on black mobility. Jones characterizes their works as modern migration narratives that look to the past to consider real and imagined futures. She also attends to these artists' relationships with gallery and museum culture and the establishment of black-owned arts spaces. With South of Pico, Jones expands the understanding of the histories of black arts and creativity in Los Angeles and beyond.

Lorna Simpson

by Naomi Beckwith, Thelma Golden, Kellie Jones, Chrissie Iles

The most comprehensive and up-to-date monograph available on the work of celebrated artist Lorna Simpson, a trailblazer who continues to influence and inspire

Lorna Simpson is a multimedia artist known for her pioneering approach to conceptual photography. In 1993 Simpson was the first African-American woman ever to show in the Venice Biennale and to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

This landmark book documents Simpson's career in its entirety, up to her most recent work - Simpson's portrait of Rihanna for the January 2021 cover of Essence has been deemed as one of the most iconic fashion images ever made by a panel of experts in The New York Magazine.

In doing so, it sheds light on the remarkable path that Simpson paved to global critical acclaim and art-world stardom. The first edition of this sell-out volume has been thoroughly revised and updated, including a new essay by Guggenheim Deputy Director Naomi Beckwith.

Suzanne Jackson What Is Love

by Kellie Jones, Taylor Jasper, Paulina Pobocha

A richly illustrated account tracing the full arc of contemporary painter Suzanne Jackson’s life and multifaceted artistic vision

First and foremost a painter, Suzanne Jackson has worked for six decades in a dizzying array of genres, including drawing, printmaking, poetry, dance, and theater design. Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love reveals Jackson’s achievements as a leading and influential artist who has been in dialogue with her contemporaries, from Betye Saar and Emory Douglas to Senga Nengudi and Mary Lovelace O’Neal.

This wide-ranging book illuminates Jackson’s work and its connections to nature, environmentalism, performance, feminism, and Black and Native traditions. It explores the way her innovative hanging acrylic works break the canvas; the role of dance and set design in Jackson’s practice; and her trailblazing Los Angeles art space Gallery 32, which she ran from 1968 to 1970, and which became a focus for a circle of fellow emerging artists. The book also features artist dialogues between Jackson and Nengudi, Saar, Fred Eversley, and Richard Mayhew, as well as a conversation between Jackson and SFMOMA painting conservator Jennifer Hickey.

Exhibition Schedule
SFMOMA, San Francisco
September 27, 2025–March 1, 2026

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
May 14, 2026–August 23, 2026

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
September 26, 2026–February 7, 2027