Annie Simpson is an artist and a small, fallible container for a primary force beyond her understanding. She works via sight-/site-based investigation to make videos, photographs, and essays. Simpson moonlights as a doctoral candidate (ABD, Criticism & Contemporary Spatial Practices track) at Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, where she serves as a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Landscape Architecture, Master of Design Studies Head Tutor, and Seminar Faculty for English for Design. For the 2024-2025 academic year, she is a Doctoral Fellow with the Harvard-Mellon Urban Initiative.

 

Her dissertation assesses the philosophical implications of ‘the planetary’ in spatial research through the unique, if curiously unaddressed, aesthetic opportunities provided by it. These openings offer a way to unsettle the dominant visual paradigm of planetary urbanization through essay and film across diverse subjects of the ecological uncanny in Georgia: feral dogs, pine plantations, river snakes, military installations, (the list goes on). Simpson’s practice grounds itself in the Southeastern United States and considers how the region plays a vital role in exporting land and labor relations and material practices globally, vis-a-vis the logics of the plantation. Recent projects include instances of nuclear spelunking in the deep South, passenger-traveler expeditions through watersheds of planetary energy transition, and various investigations of tunnels and financialization in Atlanta, capsized cargo ships off of the Georgia coast, and zones of migration/production struggle in the Lower Chattahoochee River Valley. Methodologically, she works by getting lost alongside canine companion-collaborator, Boudreaux. 

 

She is an ongoing contributor to Port Futures + Social Logistics and regularly publishes exhibition reviews and peer-reviewed enviro-spatial criticism. 

 

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I live between North Carolina and Cambridge, MA, USA. Portfolio, exhibition images, and press archive are available upon request: anniesimpson (at) gsd (dot) harvard (dot) edu. My CV is available here. 

 

My projects have been supported by the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative; Harvard University, Dean’s Merit Award and the Doctor of Design Research Grant; Monument Lab, National Fellowship; the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina; Duke University, John Hope Franklin Documentary Fellowship; University of Georgia, Campus Sustainability Grant, Willson Center Graduate Research Award, Broun Fund Award, and Graduate School Travel Grant.

 

My work has been exhibited or screened at sites including Zou-no-hana Terrace, Yokohama, Japan; Bierumer School, Bierum, Netherlands; Pier2 Artcenter, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Harvard University, Kirkland Gallery, Cambridge MA; the Goeth-Instituts across North America, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Montreal, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, and Washington, DC; Patti and Rusty Rueff Galleries, Purdue University; Atheneum, Athens, GA; The Carrack, Durham NC.

 

Previously, I worked alongside my companion-collaborator Mandy (honorary MFA from the University of Georgia, 2022). She was a very good dog.