Immersive . Experiential . Participatory : Mixed Media Painting, Sculptural Objects, Photography, Film
Alette Simmons-Jiménez is an American artist and cultural organizer, currently based in Miami. Her studio practice explores hybrid approaches, blending various mediums, techniques, and artistic conventions to create works that respond to personal experiences, memories, dreams, and nightmares. She searches within the interconnectedness of all things, to interpret the human/nature equation. Her works traverse mixed-media painting and collage, photography, poetry, text, sculptural assemblage, installation, and video.
Simmons-Jiménez received a BFA from Newcomb College in New Orleans (1975), began her studio practice in the Dominican Republic and is now based in Miami. She has exhibited extensively in museums, galleries, and media festivals internationally and has collaborated with designers and architects to install large-scale commissions in public and private spaces. She has had solo exhibits at the Museum of Arts & Sciences, MOAS, Daytona Beach (2022), The Miami Design Distict, S223 (2020), the MOMA Santo Domingo (1997), Palm Beach ICA Media Room with curator Michael Rush (2001), Inter-American Development Bank Washington D.C. with curator Susana Leval (2000), Oolite Arts (2018, 2024), Miami Beach, Florida; Frances Wolfson Gallery at Miami-Dade College (2001). Notable institutions exhibiting her work in group exhibits have been at Centro Leon, Santiago, Dominican Republic (2024); the 21C Museum, Louisville, KY (2015); The Mobile Museum of Art (1999), the US Dept. of State Art in Embassies Program in Riyadh & Tegucigalpan (2015,1999); Casa de la Cultura-Valencia, Spain(2010), Musée du Luxembourg, Paris (1989), Boca Raton Museum of Art (2014), the Appleton Museum, the Lowe Museum (2000), MOCA N. Miami (2001), and several others.
Simmons-Jiménez is a recipient of a Miami Individual Artist Grant (2023), a prestigious Knight Arts Challenge Grant (2008), a Florida Fellowship Grant & Honorable mention (1998, 1995), a Florida Artists Enhancement Grant (2006), a Miami-Dade Tourism Development Grant (2008), a Miami-Dade Community Grant (2008). The artist has been acknowledged as the first to exhibit video installation art in the Dominican Republic and was awarded the 1st Prize in Video at the XVIII Biennial there (1992). She is listed among the creatives that helped forge the South Florida art community in the definitive books ‘Miami Contemporary Artists’ (2007), and ‘100+ Degrees In The Shade: A Survey of South Florida Art’ (2015).
The artist was just recently awarded an Oolite Arts Home & Away Grant to attend a 5-week residency at MASS MoCA (2024). Prior to that she was invited to attend Essaouira, Morocco to participate at Résidence D'Artiste Ifitry, (2019) an isolated experimental workspace created to inspire and connect artists from around the world. Awarded a grant from Oolite Arts and the Es Baluard Museum of Contemporary Art in Palma de Mallorca she traveled to and participated as an Exchange Artist at the museum (2017). Recently her video art was presented in a three-month solo screening at the Miami International Airport Moving Images Gallery (2023), and her immersive work "The Rain Room" was selected for the Florida Biennial held at the Arts & Cultural Center Hollywood, FL (2023). Her most current work, a pair of interconnected sixty-foot environments, are being exhibited as temporary public art installations, commissioned by Oolite Arts for their Walgreens Window's Projects on Miami Beach (2024).
in her career, the artist's practice extended to professional collaborations dedicated to community building. From 2004-2011, she founded and directed the artist-run collective Artformz Alternative that supported and exhibited the work of over 150 artists with the goal to stimulate closer connections artist-to-artist and artist-to-public. Simmons-Jiménez served on the BOD of ArtTable, Inc in New York (2013-2016) and simultaneously held the positions of Florida Chapter Chair and Programming Director. The artist's latest expanded studio project has been as host and producer of Art & Company Podcast, (2018 - present) immediately gaining a large listening audience, drawing attention to the South Florida art scene and serving to document the many connected talents and patrons making up the artistic community.
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The ethereal enveloping installation at the Sagamore Hotel from @alette2012 aka Alette Simmons Jimenez - come delve into .... the work including her wall drawings. Magic! Grela Orihuela, Director: Design Miami, Independent Curator & Art Consultant
Alette Simmons-Jiménez offers an interconnected approach to art-making, citing feelings of closeness and isolation side-by-side. Cori Hutchinson, Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art
One of the most visceral and fascinating aspects… the flowers she was pasting up were still fading and losing their color – they were “live” paintings, in the sense that they were also dying. Anne Tschida “Nature in a Studio”
Airy sculptures, woven with wire deftly incorporate biomorphic forms as they are caught in a slow dance with gravity. Elisa Turner “Critic’s Pick” Miami Herald
Simmons-Jiménez won, in 1992, one of the prizes of the XVIII Bienal Nacional de Artes Visuales with the first video-art installation ever realized in the Dominican Republic, "A couple of days in the life of Julie Ozama" (1992). With this title "Revolution Evolution" (2003) the 'Dominican' video art and gender discourses pioneer plays with her doubled alterity … and codifies a new vision of Nature’s performatic talents. Dr. Alanna Lockward “Towards a Utopian Archeology”
A visual exploration achieved by way of a dialogue between the formal elements of video… possessed of indisputable brilliance. Jean Louis Jorge, Juror, XVIII Biennial, Dominican Republic
The effect is seductive and velvety, and mysteriously wrought with emotional associations. Dr. Carol Damian “Inside-Outside”
The artist dares again to break through her own creations freely opening up new possibilities for her art. Milagros Bello, Ph.D. “Deconstructing the Modern”