Anthony Sims | Contemporary American Artist

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About the Artist

Anthony Sims

Contemporary American artist working across painting, digital media, and blockchain-based provenance. Mississippi-born, museum-collected, internationally exhibited across 8+ countries.

Biography

Anthony Sims (b. October 11, 1998) is an American contemporary artist whose work bridges painting, digital media, and archival technologies. Through a practice informed by neo-expressionism, street culture, engineering systems, and blockchain provenance, Sims explores themes of identity, memory, displacement, and emotional permanence across both physical and digital forms.

Born in Southaven, Mississippi, and raised primarily in Lewisburg, Sims began creating art at an early age after his father's deportation to Mexico in 2006. The experience profoundly shaped his understanding of identity and belonging, establishing themes of fragmentation, resilience, and reconstruction that continue to define his practice. By 2017, while attending Northwest Mississippi Community College, he began painting seriously from his dorm room.

Sims entered the Memphis art scene in 2018 through community exhibitions hosted by Food Drank Culture, where mentorship from artist Kea Woods helped bridge his transition from street exhibitions into gallery spaces. In 2019, he received his first major publication in The Pinch Journal from the University of Memphis and held an early exhibition at Jack Robinson Gallery before relocating to Dallas, Texas. There, his paintings led to his induction into the American Pop Art Collective in New York City.

His artistic career expanded rapidly in the early 2020s. In 2020, two of his paintings—Not Finished and Deal With It—were accepted into the permanent collection of the Meridian Museum of Art, making Sims one of the youngest artists represented in the museum's collection. In 2021, he joined the SuperRare platform and emerged as part of the early NFT movement, supporting a nationwide exhibition circuit spanning Memphis, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Oakland, Austin, and London. His debut solo exhibition in Los Angeles sold out entirely.

Sims' practice has since been exhibited internationally across North America, Europe, and Asia. Notable milestones include his 2022 solo exhibition at Proyecto H Contemporáneo in Mexico City; participation in Another Dimension: Digital Art in Memphis at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; speaking engagements at Southern Methodist University; exhibitions during Art Basel Miami; and presentations in London, Florence, Paris, Hong Kong, New York, and Barcelona. His work has also appeared on public billboards in Times Square and Hong Kong, including a 2023 tribute to Tyre Nichols displayed during Frieze Week in New York City.

Alongside his artistic practice, Sims works as a Senior Automation Engineer, developing and supporting large-scale robotic and logistics systems. This technical background informs the layered structures, systems thinking, and archival methodologies present throughout his work. His interdisciplinary approach extends into blockchain provenance, artificial intelligence, and digital preservation, reflecting a broader interest in how technology shapes memory and cultural legacy.

Sims' work is held in museum collections and private collections internationally and has been featured in publications including Vogue Italia, D Magazine, Memphis Magazine, and other regional and national outlets. His practice frequently reflects the experiences of biracial Southern Americans while examining broader questions of identity, survival, and transformation.

A significant evolution in Sims' work followed the death of his close friend and collector Will Short in 2024, inspiring a deeper exploration of absence, grief, and permanence. Today, Sims continues to develop a body of work situated between painting and systems-building—creating artifacts that preserve human experience against the erosion of time.

Artist Statement

My work exists somewhere between chaos and structure—an ongoing negotiation between what I feel and what I build. I paint the way I think: in layers, in fragments, in systems that do not always resolve cleanly. Every mark carries weight, whether it is a deliberate gesture or something accidental that I chose to keep.

I was born in Southaven, Mississippi, and raised primarily in Lewisburg in the American South. Growing up biracial gave me a permanent seat between worlds. When my father was deported to Mexico in 2006, it fractured my understanding of family, identity, and belonging. Art became a method of reconstruction—a way to assemble meaning from absence, memory, and contradiction. The canvas became the one place where all of these realities could coexist without requiring resolution.

My artistic journey began in Mississippi, from winning Scholastic Art & Writing Awards at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art to exhibiting work on the streets of Memphis before entering galleries. Since then, my practice has expanded across museums, international exhibitions, and digital platforms—from museum collections in Mississippi to exhibitions in Mexico City, London, Florence, Paris, Hong Kong, New York, and Barcelona. Despite this geographic expansion, Mississippi remains the conceptual center of my work. It is both origin and reference point.

I draw from neo-expressionism, street culture, engineering logic, and the emotional weight of lived experience. My process is physical: I scrape, layer, pour, carve, and revise surfaces until something true emerges. I am not interested in creating images that merely look beautiful. I am interested in creating work that feels honest. Sometimes honesty is beautiful. Sometimes it is difficult.

Alongside painting, my practice extends into digital art, blockchain provenance, artificial intelligence, and archival systems. These technologies are not separate from the work—they are continuations of it. Whether on canvas or on-chain, I am driven by the same impulse: to document, preserve, and make permanent what might otherwise disappear. Every artwork becomes an artifact of survival and a record of becoming.

As both an artist and engineer, I am deeply interested in systems: social systems, technological systems, emotional systems, and the fragile structures that hold memory together. My work often exists at the intersection of expression and preservation, asking how identity survives displacement, how history survives time, and how individuals build meaning from uncertainty.

I want my work to feel like something you have experienced but could never fully name—that tension between holding on and letting go, between who you were and who you are becoming. If you stand in front of one of my pieces and feel something shift, even slightly, then the work has done what it was meant to do.


Curriculum Vitae

Education

  • AS in Industrial Electronics Engineering Technology

Awards

Museum Collections

Exhibitions

25+Exhibitions
8+Countries
3+Museum Exhibitions
2020Museum Collection

Solo Exhibitions

Group Exhibitions

Museum Exhibitions

Press & Publications

31+Features
12+Interviews
8+Profiles
2017Coverage Since

Selected Features

Selected Interviews

Profiles & Biographies

Public Speaking

  • Memphis Brooks Museum of Art — Memphis, TN
  • Southern Methodist University — Dallas, TX
  • Proyecto T Gallery — Mexico City, MX

Official Links