sloan leo’s poignant mixed media installation work, A Watermelon for Leo, is an assemblage of ephemera, rituals and video. The work reflects on the confines of respectability politics and is an invitation to glimpse black queer liberation. The installation includes the artist’s curated familial artifacts and centers on an inquiry about the performance of blackness, understandings of gaze and audience, and the role of church & faith in black existence/resistance.
The show was on display at Pen & Brush Gallery October 6th - December 11th, 2020, as a part of the opening fall exhibition “From Isolation to Revolution: from Rebirth to Dissent”.
If you are interested in bringing the Virtual Exhibition to your organization, community group, business (or even group of friends!) - you can sign up for a “Pay What You Want” exhibition tour stop here.
Pen + Brush is a 125-year-old publicly supported not-for-profit fighting for gender equity in the arts. All artwork is for sale, 75% of all sales go directly to the artist and 25% comes back in to feed the organization’s work. A Watermelon For Leo exhibition inventory can be found here.
*images by Julia Parris and video still from Kristen Taylor White.
“I wanna go someplace where I can have a piece of watermelon, in the sun, without any shame. Without any worry. Just present. Enjoying it. Savouring it. Relishing it. And letting it be, just for me.”
