Leigh Ledare: Artist Lecture and Film Screening

Abstract

Artist Leigh Ledare will first screen his 2017 film The Task on Monday, November 4, at 5:15 p.m., followed by a discussion with Ben Piekut and Tracy McNulty. The Task constitutes an intervention into a renowned method of social psychology, known as either Group Relations or Tavistock.

The following evening, Tuesday, November 5, at 5:15 p.m., Ledare will give a lecture that focuses on and provides a comprehensive look at numerous projects, key themes, and approaches that run as a throughline across his photographs, films, and other works.

Biography

The American artist Leigh Ledare (b. 1976, Seattle) follows a tradition of critical artists whose works combine conceptual and experiential approaches to examine societal contradictions. Introduced to the art world through Pretend You’re Actually Alive (2008) — a project including photography, text, and video which, chronicling his family, hinged on his mother's controversial performance of sexual negation — his work has since extended to mine the intersections between psychoanalysis, social psychology, anthropology, and the archive.

This has included projects such as his 2017 feature film The Task, situationally based works structured around the combination of photography and existing archives, sculptural works, site-specific interventions, and the creation of complex contractual frameworks that he uses to foreground issues of intersubjectivity, agency, and consent. Ultimately, Ledare's works transform the observer into the voyeur of intimate scenes while examining the socially constructed nature of reality and the projective assumptions that surround it.

Select exhibitions include: To you who make the springtime, I send my winter, Michele Didier, Paris (2022); XX XX, Meyer Reigger, Berlin (2021); The Plot, The Art Institute of Chicago (2017); Vokzal, The Box, Los Angeles (2016); Place du Jardin aux Fleurs, Office Baroque, Brussels (2016); Leigh Ledare, et al. (solo survey), WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (2012); as well as group exhibitions including the 2017 Whitney Biennial, The Whitney Museum of Art, New York; Manifesta 11, Zurich (2016); and the exhibitions How Soon Is Now and Ca Me Touche, Les Rencontres d'Arles, France (2010 and 2009). Ledare has taught at universities such as Princeton, Columbia, NYU, Calarts, and The Cooper Union and is currently a Senior Critic in the M.F.A. Sculpture Department at Yale University.

This event is cosponsored by the Cornell Department of Music.