Taylor Simone
Artist, Designer, Organizer
Taylor Simone stewards a dynamic and expansive studio that integrates strategic and operational planning with practices in art, writing, & design.
A thread through Simone's practice is the act of space-making. She aims to challenge frameworks of capital and domination, threading her work with focuses sustainability, equity, and systems thinking. In 2019, she received her MFA in Visual Communication from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Most recently, she worked with the Underground Music Academy, fulfilling the role of Educational Program Director. From 2019 to 2022, she held the position of Assistant Teaching Professor at Bowling Green State University. During that time, she began working with the Design Justice Network.
Her work with the Design Justice Network began in 2015. DJN is united by a set of principles that prioritize equity within design processes and frameworks. As a volunteer, she facilitated workshops, provided project management support, and co-organized the 2017 Allied Media conference track.
Simone's design practice has also allowed her to support others who align with her Principles of Practice. She has worked with clients such as: Black Chalk & Co, Complex Movements (Beware of the Dandelions), The Carr Center, Allied Media, and more.
Her work with the Design Justice Network began in 2015. DJN is united by a set of principles that prioritize equity within design processes and frameworks. As a volunteer, she facilitated workshops, provided project management support, and co-organized the 2017 Allied Media conference track.
Simone's design practice has also allowed her to support others who align with her Principles of Practice. She has worked with clients such as: Black Chalk & Co, Complex Movements (Beware of the Dandelions), The Carr Center, Allied Media, and more.
Simone is the founding director of Exodus School of Expression, a passion project dedicated to creating space for BIPOC artists, arts organizers, and educators to cultivate non-traditional practices that challenge conventional frameworks of domination and capital.
Through a commitment to small exits and incremental change, Exodus fosters an environment of self-actualization, speculation, and community engagement. In 2021, she organized Exodus's Seed Summer Residency, which brought together seven artists and four educators in Richmond, VA, sparking collaborative projects that have since evolved and are currently blossoming through offerings of resources and writing.
Through a commitment to small exits and incremental change, Exodus fosters an environment of self-actualization, speculation, and community engagement. In 2021, she organized Exodus's Seed Summer Residency, which brought together seven artists and four educators in Richmond, VA, sparking collaborative projects that have since evolved and are currently blossoming through offerings of resources and writing.
Artist Statement:
“It is the passage from the physical to the phenomenal, from quantitative to qualitative, from objective to subjective, stemming from a trajection…” (Berque, A., 2016, pg. 6)
“It is the passage from the physical to the phenomenal, from quantitative to qualitative, from objective to subjective, stemming from a trajection…” (Berque, A., 2016, pg. 6)
Berque, A. (2016). The perception of space or a perceptive milieu? L’Espace Géographique (English Edition), 45(2), 1–14. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26213781
Simone’s work explores the relationship between perception and meaning, guided by a lifelong curiosity about how we come to know the world around us. Rooted in her experience with sensory processing disorder, her practice transforms the act of perceiving into a dialogue between self and environment—where fewer filters allow for a heightened awareness of detail, rhythm, and pattern. Her work ultimately invites a slower, more connected way of seeing—one that honors the reciprocity between perception, embodiment, and the living world.
Simone’s work explores the relationship between perception and meaning, guided by a lifelong curiosity about how we come to know the world around us. Rooted in her experience with sensory processing disorder, her practice transforms the act of perceiving into a dialogue between self and environment—where fewer filters allow for a heightened awareness of detail, rhythm, and pattern. Her work ultimately invites a slower, more connected way of seeing—one that honors the reciprocity between perception, embodiment, and the living world.
Artist Biography
Originally from Wayne, Michigan, she has long been fascinated by the structures that shape everyday life—a curiosity rooted in her neurodivergent experience and early habit of disassembling objects to understand their form.
Her multidisciplinary practice moves fluidly between image-making, writing, and organizing, using structure as a language for reflection and transformation. Simone’s studies at Eastern Michigan University and Virginia Commonwealth University deepened her engagement with abstraction and material exploration, grounding her approach in both inquiry and care.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including The Start. The Finish (NW Missouri State University, 2021), The Artist is Presence (Utilities Included, 2019), and Medium (Sediment Gallery, 2017). She continues to create from Detroit, where she builds spaces for art, learning, and collective imagination.
Exhibitions
The Start. The Finish, Solo Exhibition,
NW Missouri State University, Oct. 2021
The Artist is Presence, Solo Exhibition,
Utilities Included, Chapel Hill, NC, 2019
We Made Armour, Group Exhibition, Sediment Gallery, Richmond, VA, 2019
MFA Thesis Exhibition, Group Exhibition
The Anderson, 2019
Beacon, Group Exhibition,
Torrance Art Museum, 2019
Playing in the Dark, Group Exhibition,
The Anderson, 2018
One-Cell, Group Exhibition,
Berlin, Germany, 2018
Contemporary Landscape, Group Exhibition
Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, 2018
Surface Festival,
Its Liquid, Venice, Italy 2018
Super Human, Group Exhibition,
Fisher Parish Gallery, Brooklyn New York, 2018
Medium, Solo Exhibition
Sediment Gallery, Richmond Virginia, 2017
First Friday Group Show,
Ugly Mug Cafe, Ypsilanti, MI, 2016
Annual ISU Department of Art Online Exhibition, Group Show, Idaho State University, 2016
All Media Exhibition, Group Exhibition
Ann Arbor Arts Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2015
Working Women, Group Exhibition,
Baltimore Gallery, Detroit Michigan, 2015
Hooplara, Group Exhibition,
Ford Gallery, Ypsilanti, Michigan, 2015
Curatorial
Mediating Meaning, Artist Talk Facilitation, 2026
We Wove Reality, Online Exhibition - Critica Stuff Collective, 2026
Meridian, Group Exhibition,
Richmond, Virginia, 2018
Residencies
Ritual Residency, DarkRoom Oracle, Virtual 2024
Popps Packing, Detroit, Oct-Nov 2022
Writing
Untitled Unknown, 2019
Lets Make Contact, Room Magazine, 2017
Workshops
Design Justice Principle Workshop, 2018
Kyung Hee University w/ Virginia
Commonwealth University, 2018
Abstracted/Visual Narrative, Virginia Commonwealth University Summer Intensive, 2018
Design Jusitce and Monument Ave,
Arts Research Institute, 2018
Abstracted, Pratt Institute, 2018
Design Justice Network Gathering, 2017
Artist Talks
The Start. The Finish, Lecture,
NW Missouri State University, 2021
In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, We Made Armor,
Sediment Gallery, Richmond, VA, 2019
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ6JXVF1C_c)
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Current Artist Statement
“How your heart beats as you write. How it should beat. You must feel it you know.
You must feel it and experience
it as something which transforms you. I always feel it, with each paragraph I write. I have to be at a new threshold.”
- Yvonne Vera
Mushakavanhu, T., & Mutiti, N. (2019). PROFILE Yvonne Vera. In Some writers can give you two heartbeats (pp. 44–44). essay,Black Chalk & Co.
Rooted in the expansive understanding of three types of bodies; the physical, the material, and the image, my work calls into question what it means to be whole. Self is often narrowly defined by the physical boundaries between our bodies and the world. Our bodies often being viewed as the singular home of the spirit.
I am interested in practice as a means of pushing past what we perceive as boundaries of selfhood, aligning with theories of deep ecology, and understanding how these intentions shift the systems we navigate.
Gardens of Grief 2020–2021
Grief can be understood as a process of relearning one’s sense of self after a loss has occurred. Interpretations of grief often sit in relation to the passing of loved ones while denying the complexity of what can be lost. Within a society that relies heavily on domination, loss is positioned as an inherent constant that many navigate daily. Within my current body of work, Gardens of Grief, I explore grief as a continuum. I lean into this constant fragmentation as a place of triumph, rebirth, and space for ancestral knowledge to pour through. Within these explorations, I investigate the lack of space to process grief in a culture of domination and the things that grow from it.
Each piece functions as a capsule that captures the many facades of loss. They hold paralyzing tides of pain, sadness, anger, and acceptance. The triumph of surrendering to the abstraction of self-ties back to visual abstraction traditions within the African-Diaspora. There is strength to pull from our collective understanding of abstraction as a means of creating space for grief.