Jeannie Simms’ works are rooted in the history of photography and the moving image. She produces photographs, videos, and objects in sites with border politics or rapidly changing geopolitical and economic situations, conjuring desires and fantasies from real people in settings of labour and migration. Through an interplay of intercultural collaboration, conversation, and staging, her works incorporate performances, interviews, and observational filming to create media works that defy categorization.
Her photographic work on same-sex marriage was featured on the BBC World News America television program. Past shows and screenings include the Currier Museum, the Provincetown Art Association & Museum, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), San Francisco Camerawork, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Courtisane Video and New Media Festival in Belgium, the ICA in London, the ARS Electronica Center in List Austria, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Alternative Film Center in Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro, Los Angeles County Exhibitions (LACE) and the Tufts University Aidekman Art Gallery. She completed a residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts and received a film commission from the Nara International Film Festival in Japan. Working with a municipal comune she created two public community based art projects in Reggio Calabria and presented at the Festival Delle Migrazioni in Calabria, Italy in 2022 and 2023. Simms has been funded by Art Matters, The Cambridge Arts Council, Tufts Faculty Research Awards, and a Daynard Faculty Travel Fellowship from the SMFA. Her writings have been published in the University of California Press Afterimage Journal, Make/shift Magazine, the Amsterdam University Press and others. She is a Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Photography and recently served as Director of Graduate Studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University from 2017-2021.
SMFA Graduate Program
Jeannie Simms 