Cloud, 2005

In the mid-1990s, Lorna Simpson began printing on felt—a material that absorbs light—instead of glossy photographic paper, resulting in images with a unique tactile quality. Around the same time, Simpson began making experimental films that employ the passage of time and in-betweenness as thematic elements. This image of a ghostly cloud is derived from Simpson’s 2004 video installation Cloudscape, which features the artist Terry Adkins enveloped in and disappearing from an artificial fog that moves across an empty, theatrically lit room. The misty cloud in this image, printed at almost life-size on a grid of nine felt squares, stands in for the performer. Simpson used the liminality and stillness of this scene to highlight the fugitive nature of portraiture and the ephemerality of moving images.