Simone Leigh

[En anglais]

Iconic silhouettes, transfigured, enigmatic, and utterly imperturbable: Simone Leigh’s monumental idols engage viewers in a silent dialogue with past histories of marginalization, objectification, and repression. Often incomplete, eyeless, and yet solidly present, these bodies stand proud as transfixed incarnations of different forms of resilience and persistence. Inscribed in the elegant stylization of their forms is a subtle tension that defines an underpinning sense of strength and complexity. Details are subdued, reduced to the bare minimum—scattered clues relentlessly hinting at a multitude of plausible interpretive directions; endlessly flickering. 

The glossy ceramic sheens and polished bronze define an idealized allure that emphasizes a grandiose and sleek feeling of permanence, while raffia strands tie the sculptural bodies down to earthly vicissitudes and cycles. Leigh’s combination of materials not only pays homage to African traditions but also reclaims them within the politicizing contexts of contemporary art. In sculptures often informed by early Egyptian terracotta vessels and Nigerian ibeji figures, and employing premodern techniques—including lost-wax casting and salt-fired ceramics—Leigh determinately reconfigures the global history of sculpture for the very purpose of shaping a truly new, timeless, and non-colonial-derivative Black aesthetic.