“Satellite tv for pc,” the 24-foot-tall sculpture that anchored Leigh’s present for the U.S. Pavilion, is now standing tall exterior the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Backyard. Works from her Venice presentation, which traveled first to Boston’s Institute of Modern Artwork earlier this yr, are on view on the Hirshhorn by March 3, together with three new bronzes: “Bisi,” “Herm” and “One Foot.”
Leigh’s flip representing america in Venice has rocketed her to worldwide stardom. Counting this newest present, no fewer than 5 museums in D.C. alone have proven her works this yr, together with the Smithsonian Museum of American Artwork, Glenstone, the Phillips Collection and the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork, the place one other extreme bronze holds satisfaction of place within the East Constructing atrium: “Sentinel” (2022). Upfront of her present on the Hirshhorn, Leigh spoke about her studio course of, newfound fame and a summer time she spent residing in D.C.
(This interview has been edited for size and readability.)
Q: Since your presentation on the Venice Biennale, plainly each museum within the nation has rushed to show or purchase your work. How does that really feel?
A: It’s thrilling. It’s additionally overwhelming. I’ve lived exterior this sort of glare for many of my life. I didn’t anticipate to ever have my work be fairly this seen. I’m overwhelmed by it proper now, to let you know the reality.
Q: Are you able to describe among the modifications that you just’ve skilled?
A: It felt essential that my work is included within the East Constructing of the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork. I don’t suppose that gallery has had a whole lot of change, so it was very significant for me to have my work positioned in that specific spot. For me, it was a fantastic achievement. However, Saisha Grayson, the curator who curated my work into the video present that’s up on the Smithsonian American Artwork Museum proper now, has been following my work and supporting my work for a lot of, a few years. So the opposite factor that’s occurring is the fruition of very long-term relationships that I’ve had with curators over a long time. The third factor is having this presentation on the Hirshhorn, which is one other actual achievement for me. I’m excited as a result of will probably be the second iteration of the present, and I’ve tried to make displays which might be particular to every set up. I’m excited the Hirshhorn will current three new bronzes.
Q: Inform me about “Satellite tv for pc.” What’s the origin for this piece?
A: “Satellite tv for pc” is the sort of subject material I’ve been fascinated about for a very long time. I like to consider the physique and the way it may be an equipment for ancestor worship. There’s a giving and receiving with the physique. I’m all the time riffing on completely different sorts of African artwork, sculpture and materials tradition. On this case particularly, I used to be fascinated by the D’mba mask. The picket equipment used for the masks has turn out to be common sculpture to gather within the West. It was included within the Peggy Guggenheim assortment in Venice. “Satellite tv for pc” is one other a part of the dialog about African artwork in an American Pavilion context.
Q: The U.S. Pavilion in Venice is a neoclassical constructing that resembles Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. For a chunk known as “Facade,” you obscured the pavilion by overlaying it with a thatched roof and picket beams. What does that constructing imply to you?
A: I used to be very conscious of the constructing being Monticello-like and referencing that model of structure and all of the content material that comes with that. Monticello was constructed by slaves. It wasn’t that a lot of a shift to think about one other sort of constructing that has extra early African types. There’s not as large a spot between the facade I created over the pavilion and the pavilion itself, if you consider how issues are made and the way worth is created.
Q: Your work pairs bronze and stone with supplies traditionally related to craft and ladies’s work: ceramics, porcelain, terra cotta, raffia. Is there nonetheless an unfair damaging connotation related to these supplies?
A: That has positively been a by line within the work, making labor extra seen. Which is a part of my obsession with terra cotta pots. Their worth is so tied to the worth of ladies, which is how I began my profession in artwork, simply fascinated by that. Folks’s attitudes towards ceramic supplies in artwork have modified over the past 20 years actually dramatically. I had an art work rejected from a present that I utilized for in perhaps 2001. I used to be advised by the curator that she wouldn’t present my work as a result of it was ceramic. After I got here to New York and began to work in artwork, a whole lot of artists have been extra fascinated about detritus, and extra fascinated about eliminating objects, and making extra ephemeral artwork or artwork that might not be collected. And so I needed to wait a very long time earlier than folks may perceive what I used to be doing. There was a way that I used to be out of step with everybody else.
Q: You make full-size clay variations in your monumental bronze sculptures earlier than you forged them. That’s an uncommon method in sculpture. Are you able to speak about your course of?
A: What I’ve realized is that in the event you take a smaller object and use 3D modeling to blow it up, it turns into one thing completely different than what you supposed. The one solution to actually understand the item — to be seen by the viewer in the best way that you’d need it to be understood — is to make it to scale. In case you’re wanting down on one thing on a tabletop, it will seem fully in another way than in the event you’re wanting up at it when it’s one thing 24 toes tall. Additionally, it offers me the chance to improvise and alter as I’m constructing. That’s a extremely essential a part of the method for me.
Q: You labored as an intern on the Nationwide Museum of African Artwork. What was that like?
A: I labored with the ceramics curator, and I xeroxed all of those books and pamphlets that described West African and Southern African ceramic constructing methods. These are texts that have been written principally by anthropologists or missionaries. I knew a whole lot of these texts that I used to be studying have been fraught, due to the conundrum of anthropology as a colonial science. In school, I used to be studying Edward Stated and “Orientalism” and beginning to be taught quite a bit about post-coloniality, or what we have been hoping would turn out to be a discourse round post-coloniality. Now we don’t say that anymore, because it’s not like colonialism has actually stopped. The museum was comparatively new. There have been a whole lot of students of African artwork who didn’t essentially have a house within the U.S. to collect and have discourse with different folks, so it felt very intellectually wealthy and thrilling. It was thrilling to be in a library of African artwork types. I felt like I acquired entry to a whole lot of texts. That was fantastic at such a younger age.
A: I feel it was 1987, perhaps ’88.
Q: Do you may have sturdy reminiscences of residing in D.C. from that point?
A: I keep in mind going to the Ethiopian restaurant Meskerem. I keep in mind going to a lecture on West African hand-building at Howard College. I met with Nigerian artist Sokari Douglas Camp, and he or she gave me a lesson on hand-building at Howard there within the studio one time. I keep in mind listening to the curators trip about how they may get folks enthusiastic about Dogon statuary, the way to convey folks into the constructing. It was wonderful to listen to these conversations.
Q: Has this degree of success modified your studio apply in any respect?
A: I’ve been in a position to make extra work. I labored with one assistant for many of my profession. Then earlier than exhibitions, we’d rent extra folks to work with us. Now I’ve a studio with 12 staff. That’s as large as I can get. I don’t suppose I can get any larger with out dropping some management of the work. It’s nonetheless one thing I’m watching on a regular basis. I’m always tinkering to attempt to determine what’s precisely the right-size studio. I’m in a fantastic place proper now. Particularly as a result of three of these folks, three of the 12, are administrative assist. So I’ve been in a position to rent folks to do sufficient of the administration, the emails and paperwork, that I’m really in a position to be extra within the studio than I might have been 5 years in the past. It’s a factor. I’ve reached my restrict. I don’t need a studio that’s very large. I’m in a great place the place I don’t really feel pressured to make work in any respect. I’m very proud of my studio apply proper now.
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Backyard, Independence Avenue and Seventh Road SW. hirshhorn.si.edu.