«Paintings, collages and sculptural elements take shape in dialogue with each other: they are not the realization of isolated ideas» Lorna Simpson

Third Person is the first exhibition of its kind in Europe dedicated to Lorna Simpson. Held at Punta della Dogana in Venice from March 29, 2026, to November 22, 2026, it continues the journey begun at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with the Source Notes exhibition in 2025.  The accompanying catalogue, designed and conceived by Irma Boom Office, documents Simpson’s evolution towards painting, delving into its role in her recent practice. Starting from photography and collage, Simpson has progressively expanded her work towards the pictorial medium, which in recent years has become the focus of a broader reflection on memory, the power of images, and the racial and gender dynamics that permeate history and society.

Curator Emma Lavigne’s critical text, Third Person, un racconto polifonico, explores the complexity of Simpson’s visual language, an artist who since the 1980s has developed pioneering research on the relationship between images, identity, and cultural memory. The works collected in the volume highlight the recurring use of archival images – historical photographs, editorial materials from magazines such as Ebony and Jet – which the artist reworks through processes of screen printing, layering and pictorial erasure. In this way, images become layered surfaces in which individual and collective memories, forgotten stories, and traces of historical violence emerge.

The thematic sections in which the volume is organized guide the reader through the main moments of Simpson’s artistic research: Sedimenti di memoria, dedicated to work on archives and magazines; Tagliare, incollare, riconfigurare, on the role of collage as a creative laboratory; Da allora a oggi, on the evolution of artistic practice; Special Characters, dedicated to the series of “hyperreal” works of the same name; Presenze mutevoli, on figures and identities that escape any fixity; Mondi sospesi, to landscapes and cosmic dimensions.

The numerous exhibition views highlight the intense dialogue created between Simpson’s works and the architecture of Punta della Dogana designed by Tadao Ando.