Nzinga Simmons

Nzinga Simmons is a curator and art history scholar based in Durham, North Carolina. She earned her B.A. in Art History from the University of North Carolina, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at Duke University. Her dissertation research examines Black contemporary artists whose engagement with technology demonstrates the potentiality of new media to construct an expansive representation of Blackness; one that resist the rigidity of hegemonic representation, and instead, leans into the formal capacity of abstraction, multiplicity, and rupture to visualize Black life. Prior to graduate studies, Simmons served as the inaugural Tina Dunkley Curatorial Fellow in American Art. In this position, she curated “UNBOUND,” an exhibition examining the history of African American abstraction at the Zuckerman Museum of Art. Through her scholarship and curatorial practice, she aims to highlight the vast and significant contributions of underrepresented artists to the canon of American Art.