Lorna Simpson was born in 1960 in Brooklyn, New York, and received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. When she emerged from the graduate program at San Diego in 1985, she was already considered a pioneer of conceptual photography. Simpson is known for working in a wide range of mediums including photograph-and-text works, videos, drawings, collage and paintings that confront and challenge conventional views of culture, representation and memory.  In her latest works, lone figures amidst nebulous spaces are a return to and departure from her earlier unidentified figures in a deepened exploration of contemporary culture. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Jeu de Paume, Paris; and Haus der Kunst; Munich amongst others, as well as important international exhibitions such as the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Documenta XI in Kassel, Germany, and the 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy.