My Favorite Artwork | Lorna Simpson

My name is Lorna Simpson and I am an artist. When I think of a singular work that I feel is meaningful, it would be filmmaker Chantal Akerman, and it is the film “Jeanne Dielman.” It chronicles the life of a woman — the minutiae of her life. She shops. She goes to the grocery store. She prepares meals before her son comes home from school. She’s also a prostitute. And the narrative escalates through watching the day-to-day movements of this woman. The cameraperson, Babette Mangolte, who I had met in California, her design was to have the camera sit in one spot without movement. The relationship between duration of time and the viewer is exploded. I think I saw this film in 1983. I’ve never seen the film again. But it has made such an impression on me, in terms of thinking about time and observation. There’s a piece called “31,” where I have 31 monitors over 30 days. And I shoot this woman going through day and night of 31 days of a month. And in some ways, it’s very much owed to Chantal Akerman. I love the thing of exploiting small moments as a diary that kind of never can be completely absorbed by the viewer.