Annie Simpson is an artist and a small, fallible container for a primary force beyond her understanding. She works via sight-/site-based investigation to make videos, photographs, and essays. Simpson moonlights as a doctoral candidate (ABD, Criticism & Contemporary Spatial Practices track) at Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, where she serves as a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Architecture. 

 

Her dissertation assesses the philosophical implications of ‘the planetary’ in spatial research through the unique, if curiously unaddressed, aesthetic opportunities provided by it. These openings offer a way to unsettle the dominant visual paradigm of planetary urbanization through essay and film across diverse subjects of the ecological uncanny in Georgia: feral dogs, pine plantations, river snakes, military installations, (the list goes on). Simpson’s practice grounds itself in the Southeastern United States and considers how the region plays a vital role in exporting land and labor relations and material practices globally, vis-a-vis the logics of the plantation. Recent projects include instances of nuclear spelunking in the deep South, passenger-traveler expeditions through watersheds of planetary energy transition, and various investigations of tunnels and financialization in Atlanta, capsized cargo ships off of the Georgia coast, and zones of migration/production struggle in the Lower Chattahoochee River Valley. Methodologically, she works by getting lost. 

 

She is an ongoing contributor to Port Futures + Social Logistics and regularly publishes exhibition reviews and peer-reviewed enviro-spatial criticism. 

 

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I live between North Carolina and Cambridge, MA, USA. Portfolio, exhibition images, press archive, and CV are available upon request: anniesimpson (at) gsd (dot) harvard (dot) edu

 

My projects have been supported by Harvard University, Dean’s Merit Award; Monument Lab, National Fellowship; the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina; Duke University, John Hope Franklin Documentary Fellowship; University of Georgia, Campus Sustainability Grant, Willson Center Graduate Research Award, Broun Fund Award, Graduate School Travel Grant.

 

My work has been exhibited or screened at sites including Zou-no-hana Terrace, Yokohama, Japan; Bierumer School, Bierum, Netherlands; Pier2 Artcenter, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Harvard University, Kirkland Gallery, Cambridge MA; the Goeth-Instituts across North America, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Montreal, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, and Washington, DC; Patti and Rusty Rueff Galleries, Purdue University; Atheneum, Athens, GA; The Carrack, Durham NC.

 

Previously, I worked alongside my companion-collaborator Mandy (honorary MFA from the University of Georgia, 2022). She was a very good dog.