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Shaun Leonardo
Shaun Leonardo’s multidisciplinary work negotiates societal expectations of manhood, namely definitions surrounding black and brown masculinities, along with its notions of achievement, collective identity, and experience of failure. His performance practice, anchored by his work in Assembly—a diversion program for system-impacted youth at the arts nonprofit Recess, where he is Co-Director—is participatory and invested in a process of embodiment. |
Leonardo is a Brooklyn-based artist from Queens, New York City. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is a recipient of support from Creative Capital, Guggenheim Social Practice, Art for Justice and A Blade of Grass. His work has been featured at The Guggenheim Museum, the High Line, and New Museum, and profiled in the New York Times and CNN. His solo exhibition, The Breath of Empty Space, was presented at MICA, MASS MoCA and The Bronx Museum. And his first major public art commission, Between Four Freedoms, premiered at Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, in the fall of 2021.
Recess artRecess partners with artists to build a more just and equitable creative community. By welcoming radical thinkers to imagine networks of community resilience and safety, Recess defines and advances the possibilities of contemporary art. The Assembly program offers those caught up in the justice system an inroad to art and connections to working artists and serves as an alternative to incarceration while empowering young people to take charge of their own life story and envision a career in the arts. Once participants complete the program prosecutors may close and seal their cases, allowing youth to avoid an adult record. Participants may stay involved at Recess through paid, long-term training and arts engagement.
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