Taryn Simon in Conversation with Teju Cole

Taryn Simon makes visible the contours of power and authority hidden within familiar systems of organization—bloodlines, picture collections, mourning rituals, and ceremonial flower arrangements, among others. Incorporating mediums ranging from photography and sculpture to language, sound, and performance, her works are informed by research on institutions including the US Department of Homeland Security, the Central Zionist Archives, and the International Commission on Missing Persons. Her recent books and projects include The Picture Collection (2013–20), A Cold Hole (2018–19), and Assembled Audience (2018–19), and her work is in the collections of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Guggenheim Museum; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Museum für Monderne Kunst, Frankfurt. Simon’s work was also included in the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). Read more at the artist’s website.

Born in the US and raised in Nigeria, Teju Cole is the author of the novels Open City (2012), which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, and Every Day Is for the Thief (2015), which was named a New York Times Book of the Year. His 2016 essay collection Known and Strange Things spans art, literature, and politics with topics ranging from the White Savior Industrial Complex and Black Lives Matter to Snapchat and Shakespeare. In 2017, Cole produced Blind Spot—a synthesis of written observations and travel photography. Formerly the photography critic for New York Times Magazine (2015–19), Cole is currently the Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard. In 2019 he was invited by Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography to curate Go Down Moses, which explores themes of freedom, suffering, the environment, and the future; the exhibition marked Cole’s major curatorial debut. Read more at Cole’s website.