Bio: Leah Byck was born in Manhattan, NY, grew up in Chappaqua, NY, and is a graduate student from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Leah is a certified K-12 art teacher with an MFA in visual art, has shown in a number of solo and group exhibitions and is a recipient of the Flora Brown Music scholarship for their years of study at Ithaca College as well as a recipient of the Center for Arts + Social Justice Fellowship Grant from the VCFA Center for Arts and Social Justice. Currently, Leah is working on new research, art projects and plans to continue showing art and perform in drag across NYC and abroad. Leah is a performance artist, a visual artist, as well as a percussionist and multi-instrumentalist musician that goes by the musician name Waring. Through a PhD program in visual art, Leah hopes to continue to incorporate drag and music studies into their future visual artwork and push the boundaries of what visual art is, as well as what music is and how these mediums all intertwine.

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Artist Statement:

The art I create stems from my experiences and it is my way of communicating with the world. It provides insight into the multiple social justice movements in our political world such as racial justice, identity politics, disability justice and climate justice. As I grapple with my own intersectional identity and notions of truth, the artwork I create centers around all aspects of today’s social injustices and the issues surrounding justice for marginalized communities. Although my main medium is painting, I continue to produce work through several other mediums, including video, printmaking, sculpture, ink/pencil drawing, music and performance.

 

My projects are directly connected to community care, collective experiences and my own experiences in fighting for intersectional social justice movements across the United States and the world as I travel through different states and countries. At all times, the focus is to create safe spaces for individuals, communities and to create communities organized around intersectional perspectives. My communal interview research is how I’ve built on and continue to develop my studio practice and now correlates with intersecting social justice movements. My work is influenced by artists such as Kehinde Wiley, Mores McWrath and LJ Roberts, who challenge the notion of who and what is presented and represented in visual art.

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