Juliana Cerqueira Leite

Brooklyn, NY
Residency: April-May 2012

Juliana Cerqueira Leite’s work engages the history of figurative art, re-formulating representation to reflect volition in form. Her practice explores notions of control over matter and the body’s physical translation of will and desire, investigating how form is produced through repeated intention. Primarily a sculptor Leite makes use of traditional sculptural processes and materials while breaking away from the historical syntax of figurative representation. Leite makes use of physically demanding activities such as digging, rolling, climbing, and falling, to resolve sculptural concerns, approaching these themes also through drawings, photography and video. Leite’s practice unites performance and sculpture to represent the physical mutability at the core of everyday being.

Juliana Cerqueira Leite completed an MFA Sculpture at London’s Slade School of Fine Art in 2006, followed by an MA in Drawing at Camberwell College of Art. She has since exhibited her work internationally with recent group shows in Lithuania, California and London including Newspeak at the Saatchi Gallery, Bold Tendencies IV at the Hannah Barry Gallery, the 4th Marrakech Biennial and recently a solo show at Galleria Lorcan O’Neill in Rome. Juliana is recipient of the 2006 Kenneth Armitage Sculpture Prize and the 2010-11 A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship. She was also in residence in 2009 at the Banff Arts Center in Alberta Canada. Her work is held in private collections in New York and London.