Artist Statement/ Biography

Le’Andra LeSeur's work explores black identity informed by the effects that regulated systems of oppression have on black women, specifically. LeSeur is concerned with the spectacle that has ensued as a reaction to black joy and black trauma, simultaneously, and how this has further created generalizations of what blackness truly is. Through visual media, installation, and performance, her hope is to reclaim and dismantle stereotypes surrounding black female identity through the reworking of conventional art forms and mundane objects - ultimately reshaping the context of spaces where the lives of the oppressed are silenced and celebrated in the same breath.

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Le'Andra LeSeur (b.1989) is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Jersey City, NJ. She has exhibited work at Arnika Dawkins Gallery and Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, GA and her work is featured in permanent and private collections throughout the southeast. She was the recipient of the 2017 Contemporary Black Art award at Artprize 9 in Grand Rapids, MI for her piece, Searching, and the recipient of the 2018 Time-Based Category Award and Juried Grand Prize at Artprize 10 in Grand Rapids, MI for her piece, brown, carmine, and blue. Outside of creating her own work, LeSeur has made notable contributions to the arts through her active participation in curating exhibitions and workshops for women of color that speak to the power in existing through expression in a world that shuns black women for these exact actions.