In collaboration with the Department of Art History and Critical Dialogues, please join us for a lecture by artist Shaun Leonardo. Leonardo's multidisciplinary approach negotiates societal expectations of manhood, namely definitions surrounding black and brown masculinity, 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 court-involved youth at the Brooklyn-based, non-profit Recess—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, is a recipient of support from Creative Capital, Guggenheim Social Practice, Art for Justice, and A Blade of Grass. From fall 2018 - spring 2020 Leonardo was a Visiting Fellow at Pratt Institute School of Art.