ARTISTS
Simone Leigh: Recent Sculptures
Simone Leigh has spent more than 20 years exploring Black female subjectivity. Her practice across sculpture, video and installation includes works that merge the female form with architectural structures and materials to draw attention to histories that have often been overlooked or erased.
These two recent sculptures focus on women鈥檚 unacknowledged acts of work, community and care. They demonstrate Leigh鈥檚 ongoing interest in African diasporic aesthetics, vernacular architecture, and the idea of the body as a vessel, or metaphor for shelter and refuge.
Bisi (2023) honours the late Nigerian curator Bisi Silva (1962鈥�2019), whose vision and influence shaped contemporary art on the African continent and beyond. The sculpture is an anonymous, armless female bust with closely cropped hair and stands at 2.7 metres tall. Its hollow skirt, scaled directly to fit the artist鈥檚 body, reflects Leigh鈥檚 interest in the skirt as a vessel.
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Simone Leigh has spent more than 20 years exploring Black female subjectivity. Her practice across sculpture, video and installation includes works that merge the female form with architectural structures and materials to draw attention to histories that have often been overlooked or erased.
These two recent sculptures focus on women鈥檚 unacknowledged acts of work, community and care. They demonstrate Leigh鈥檚 ongoing interest in African diasporic aesthetics, vernacular architecture, and the idea of the body as a vessel, or metaphor for shelter and refuge.
Bisi (2023) honours the late Nigerian curator Bisi Silva (1962鈥�2019), whose vision and influence shaped contemporary art on the African continent and beyond. The sculpture is an anonymous, armless female bust with closely cropped hair and stands at 2.7 metres tall. Its hollow skirt, scaled directly to fit the artist鈥檚 body, reflects Leigh鈥檚 interest in the skirt as a vessel.
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Shown in the Sunley Gallery, Bisi (2023) and Untitled (2023鈥�4) echo across seas and histories, connecting the female body to the movements of people, objects, and ideas.
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