Simone Leigh Loophole of Retreat Guggenheim Museum, New York

Simone Leigh studied ceramics with Mike Thiedeman at Earlham College, a small Quaker school in Indiana. She still uses clay as an element of many of her works, but her purview extends far beyond the usual realms of ceramics. She thinks big, both in dimensions and in concepts, addressing in particular the black female experience.

I first saw her work in an exhibition at H&R Block Artspace, part of the Kansas City Art Institute, when NCECA was held in Kansas City in 2016. I was obviously late to the discovery, for that exhibition, titled was not at the emerging level but instead demonstrated a powerful multi-medium achievement (both sculpture and video), well developed in every sense. Thus it’s not really a surprise that Leigh was named the winner of the Hugo Boss Prize for 2018, which