Satellite

Simone Leigh represented the United States at the 2022 Venice Biennale, and her monumental sculpture Satellite welcomed visitors to the American Pavilion that summer. A second cast of this bronze now stands in front of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building at the center of the Museum’s Sarofim campus. Satellite reflects forms found in the traditional D’mba (or nimba) headdresses created by the Baga peoples of Guinea, the ceremonial ladles of the Dan peoples, and vernacular traditions across the African Diaspora. With its evocations of maternity and dignity, the sculpture expresses the artist’s intent to honor the historically undervalued labor – both physical and intellectual – of Black women. “In order to tell the truth,” Leigh has stated, “you need to invent what might be missing from the archive, to collapse time, to concern yourself with issues of scale, to formally move things around in a way that reveals something more true than fact.”