Her incendiary collages of vintage black pinups made her one of the most influential artists of her time. Now she’s battling the ‘insanity’ of Trump’s America

Lorna Simpson is holed up in Los Angeles with her actor daughter right now. She’s been spending lockdown doing one of her favourite things: reflecting on how people present themselves when out in public. All this people-watching has put her in mind of the 1990s, when she would go wig-hunting in Fulton Mall, a blue-collar shopping centre near her home in New York.

“Shop after shop sold all sorts of wigs,” says the 59-year-old. “Human hair, yak hair, synthetic hair.” Simpson bought as many as she could, in every style she saw: from platinum-blonde “Lana Turner” wigs to fake afros and braids. She transferred photographs of each one on to panels of felt before hanging them alongside such seemingly disconnected phrases as: “First impressions are the most lasting.” The wigs were a “surrogate”, she says, a way to explore “the person we see ourselves to be”.

Just as the Caucasian figure in contemporary art is seen as universal, the black figure of African descent should be too

Any society, or self, constructed to always separate itself from the other is doomed

Lorna Simpson: Give Me Some Moments is at Hauser & Wirth’s website