Feminist Futures

In Lorna Simpson’s Earth & Sky 2 (2018), part of a series of collaged portraits of Black women that Simpson has been making for a decade, a constellation glides in streaks and waves from a woman’s head. The subject looks straight out of the frame, one hand poised as if about to relay an important message from the stars. In other images from the series, uncut geological specimens—of asphalt and amber, garnet and malachite—adorn women as magnificent crowns and gowns; in one, a perfect bubble floats, inviolable, above a young, modish face. Galactic, regal, and elemental by turn, Simpson’s subjects appear out of time, their serene expressions foils for exuberant coifs, expansive imaginations, even glints of premonition. What future might they portend?

Simpson propels forward through the past, splicing her subjects out of advertisements from vintage copies of and , groundbreaking U.S. magazines, begun at midcentury, that focus on Black news, culture, and entertainment. Simpson’s images, neither pedantic nor prescriptive, reference the progressive confidence of the magazines, the illusions of glamour and desire they project, and the fraught history of Black women’s hair (a frequent subject for Simpson across her career). They speak of a once-imagined future and of a present moment grappling with the limits and