LeAndra LeSeur; Am I a God?, 2018, Single Channel Video, 1m 57s
LeAndra LeSeur
Girls Girls Girls
Curated by Natasha Becker
October 17-December 1, 2019
Opening and Performance, Sunday, October 27, 5-8pm
Please join us for the opening of LeAndra LeSeur’s first solo exhibition in New York curated by Natasha Becker.
Girls Girls Girls challenges the desire surrounding black women and their bodies, which has long been sexually overt and at most times degrading, by honoring the black female body as a radiating vessel for love, care, and compassion.
How do black women show vulnerability, asks LeSeur, how can they be honored and respected for those vulnerabilities? Do black women have to exist beyond their bodies in order to be respected, heard, and seen? “The continuous question of how we honor not only the lives of black women, but the stories these women tell,” says the artist, “is something I hold dear to my ongoing practice.”
This exhibition brings together colored light, ink on paper, textiles, video, and performance to dissect the overwhelming pressures placed on the black body.
As the viewer enters the space, the desire to view LeSeur’s subjects should be likened to that same desire for a connection to something greater than ourselves – something worthy of our undivided attention, honor and respect. “My hope,” she says, “is that this project reframes how we perceive black women and offers viewers a way to connect to black women through respect and love.”
5pm: Performance, Assembly Room, Sidewalk Cellar space
Subject to Your Approval
This durational performance is a study on the power given to society to either validate or invalidate someone else’s experience. The artist will stand on a pedestal for up to three hours continuously flashing strobe lights on her nude body only as guests walk into the performance space. The decision that each visitor makes to enter the space gives them the power to decide how the artist’s body will exist in that space -going unnoticed or becoming fully exposed.
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Le’Andra LeSeur (b.1989 in Bronx, NY) is a multidisciplinary artist working and living in Jersey City, NJ. She received her BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2014. Her work explores black identity informed by the effects that regulated systems of oppression have on black women, specifically. LeSeur was the recipient of the 2017 Contemporary Black Art award at Artprize 9 in Grand Rapids, MI for her piece, Searching and the recipient of the 2018 Time-Based Category Award and Juried Grand Prize at Artprize 10 in Grand Rapids, MI for her piece, brown, carmine, and blue. Outside of her work as an artist, she is active in curating exhibitions and workshops that empower for women of color.
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Natasha Becker is an Independent Curator and one of the founding curators of Assembly Room. Her most recent exhibition was Radical Love at the Ford Foundation Art Gallery in New York (August, 2019).
