The Bed

1995, reprinted 2016

Through a poetic Black feminist approach, Lorna Simpson explores the limitations of respite and retreat in this felt-based work. The photographs of empty hotel beds, framed by open doorways, capture a contradictory state of security and vulnerability, which the artist echoes in text on the adjacent panel. In suggesting, rather than representing, the body, Simpson invokes a sense of intimacy and pleasure that might be interrupted by the racialized gaze.