Miriam Laura Leonardi
Miriam Laura Leonardi’s work explores issues surrounding social dynamics, through various forms of media, particularly video, performance, and sculpture. Leonardi is a prolific conceptual artist, addressing the individual—as both a subject and object of the gaze—in relation to culture. Through her references to Surrealism, Miriam reveals the paradoxical positioning of display or mimicry, in-between „meaning“ and „fading“, the subject beside itself. Her work has been exhibited internationally including the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo (NOR), Istituto Svizzero in Rome (IT), Natalie Seroussi in Paris (FR) and Plymouth Rock in Zurich (CH).
PROJECT PROPOSAL FOR BFSP #02
The bronze sculpture Female has the size of a portable item, a purse, an oversized bracelet or ring. „We still have it on our table. We usually take it with us, like a wedding ring, no?“ (Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, New York 1971) Marcel Duchamp’s erotic object Wedge of Chastity (1954, cast 1963) was thought as a wedding gift for Alexina „Teeny“ Duchamp and it was cast in both bronze and dental plastic expressing a coupling of female and male. In my sculpture, Duchamp’s expression of a coupling of male and female, or positive and negative shape, is replaced by a single form to signal an interest in restoring an explicit female presence. Its title refers to the slogan "The Future is Female" and thus suggests that the future is already a present archetype, pushing the organic towards the abstract.
