Star for a Night

For the exhibition Made by... Feito por brasileiros, Simmons clad one of the building’s corridors with boxing posters daubed with shooting stars in stark black paint. Inspired by some of boxing’s tragic heroes, such as Emile Griffith, Benny Paret, and Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, the artist examines the political, historical, racial, and class aspects intrinsic to sporting culture. Executed in his trademark style, with isolated, phantasmagorical, almost faded gestures, the installation meditates on the building’s “broken” body and, metaphorically, on the role of hospitals as places of cure and healing.For the last twenty years, Simmons has been exploring the theme of racial identity in pop culture through mixed media. One of his recent works, In This Corner, reconstitutes some construction site hoarding plastered with posters promoting the 1938 fight between the African-American Joe Louis and the Nazi-sponsored German, Max Schmeling.