Joshua Leon

Lives and works in London, UK

Artist statement

Joshua Leon is an artist, writer, and researcher. His practice examines the poetics and politics of the archive through the lens of diasporic subjectivity, chronic illness, and embodied historiography. Drawing on Jewish cultural memory and psychoanalytic thought, Leon’s work explores how language, material, and institutional forms register collapse, latency, and displacement. His projects move between writing, exhibition-making, and pedagogy, treating each as a reciprocal mode of research. Selected solo exhibitions: 2024 The Missing O and E, Chisenhale Gallery, London; 2021 Loose Routes Along the Familiar, Madonna del Pozzo, Spoleto; Attendance(s) Close to the Close, Daily Practice, Rotterdam. Selected group exhibitions: 2025 Burn the Diaries, Read the Out Loud, Kunsthalle Karlsplatz, Vienna; Tactical Spectres, La Ferme du Buisson, Paris; 2024 Air de Repos, CAPC, Bordeaux; Absence, Chisenhale Gallery, London, Itinéraire Fantôme, CAPC, Bordeaux; Presque Partout (almost everywhere), 49 Nord 6 Est, Frac Lorraine, Metz; 2023 Archive as……Slippages, Kunstverein München, Munich; 2022 Revision, PEER, London; POST, Barbican, London Expo in a Box, 49 Nord 6 Est, Frac Lorraine, Metz; An Incomplete A–Z of Art and Poetry, Mahler + LeWitt, London; 2021 Governmental Fires, Futura, Prague. In 2024 his first publication The Process (Chisenhale Gallery & Mousse, ed. Olivia Aherne and Amy Jones) was awarded the Emerging Art Foundation Writing Prize. Leon has an upcoming solo exhibition...

Artwork

• Grapewatching, 2025. Installation
• The kitchen from the spot where he sat for the formative years of his life, 2025. C-type print
• An index of a colour that consistently became more commonplace as I moved countries and my auras reduced for a short while, 2025. Laserjet on paper
• Rabbi Chic Nos. 1,2,3,8,11,14,16,18, 2025. Ink on paper
• Migraine Alteration, 2025. 6 VARTA flashlights, Laserjet on Paper
• Glass (the memory I cannot remember) 1-5, 2025. Painted Glass
• Shuadit , 2024. Chocolate
• The Missing O and E, 2024. Stained glass panes, giclee prints, veneer, beech, antique rosewood veneer, sapele veneer, MDF, birch, audio, violin, silence, 8020 genelec speaker, speaker stand, Focusrite interface
• A portrait in f I, 2024. Antique rosewood veneer, sapele veneer, MDF, birch
• Kurt, Ken, Curtis, David (what's in a name?), 2024. 9 Giclee prints, veneer, beech, stained glass
• [ ] O [ ] E [ ], 2024. Stained glass panes
• Enigma Variations & A portrait in f II, 2024. Audio 36 minutes, 36 seconds, Violin, silence, genelec speaker, speaker stand, Focusrite interface, Antique rosewood veneer, sapele veneer, MDF, birch
• Slippages, 2023. Digital Inkjet print on paper
• Attendance(s) Close to the Close, 2021. Digital Inkjet print on paper, coffee, apple, envelopes, candles, matches, wood, glass, dust
• Proposal to Reform (windows 1939), 2021. Ink on tracing paper
• Invitation to Steal, 2020. Digital Inkjet print on paper