Sarah Leiva (b. 2001)
… is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Miami, FL. Her practice explores themes of queerness, labor, history, and love. Leiva explores these concepts through crafting garments and sculptures using materials such as metal, leather, and biomaterials. In addition to pulling from historical contexts and found objects, Leiva references her own Jewish and Latino lineage. She has been included in exhibitions across the United States, including Baltimore, Chicago, Miami, and New York. In addition to her visual art practice, Leiva is also an arts educator and has been involved with organizations catered to those who seek access to the arts. This experience has shaped Leiva’s understanding of an artistic practice as one that is not isolated nor individual, but rather a community effort.
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Artist Statement
Materiality is the lens through which I understand the world. From lambskin and metal to water and the body, I find a sense of catharsis in forming methods of creation and transformation. Found objects and their histories are also a catalyst through which feelings of desire, nostalgia, discomfort, love, and labor are communicated. My practice is sculpture-based and performance-informed, allowing these two mediums to blend into one another. In this process, I use scale, malleability, and weight to find points of contact and tension between materials, objects, and bodies. I seek to findsolace in this tumultuous idea that several truths can coexist and create this work to better understand the relationship that I have with myself and those I love. My work is about asking questions of myself and others; I am constantly implicating the viewer in these conversations and performances. Talmudic is a word that I currently use to describe my practice, in that I focus on the details, both conceptually and physically. Through my work I ask myself and viewers alike to hold all that they can at once, to grasp and buckle, to twist and sink, to stand and be gentle and violent all in the same breath.