Juliana Cerqueira Leite

Juliana Cerqueira Leite (1981) is a Brazilian artist based in New York, she is interested in the parameters of the body and the space that it creates; her large-scale, tactile sculptures investigate the abilities and constraints of the human body. “Creating new forms is a mission for me,” said Cerqueira Leite, “a way of not reasserting the world as it is, but of positing a transformation”. The artist’s sculptures testify to one’s ability to transmute the world around them. Using her own body as a primary tool, Cerqueira Leite digs, combs, scratches, and pushes through her materials —which include clay, latex and plaster— to create organic forms. Her sculptures retain impressions of the artist’s legs, arms and fingers and often resemble skin, bone and similarly corporeal matter. Explaining her use of materials, Cerqueira Leite has said: “One of the reasons I use so much density of material is that I want to upset the status quo: the idea that matter is consistently subservient to our desires. I want to put myself in a position where matter is in just as much control as I am”.