Untitled VI (Anatomy of Architecture series)

Probing pertinent themes of racial and cultural identity, the present work belongs to Simone Leigh’s celebrated Anatomy of Architecture series. Begun in 2016, this ongoing cycle of sculptures earned her Manhattan’s first ever High Line Plinth commission two years later, culminating in the monumental work Brick House which is currently installed on the city’s famous elevated outdoor walkway. Originally trained as a ceramicist, Leigh uses sculpture, video, installation and social practice to explore black female identified subjectivity, drawing upon her own Jamaican heritage. Spending time at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington D. C. as a student fired her interest in Western attitudes towards objects associated with the African diaspora. In her Anatomy of Architecture series, she re-imagines the human form through architectural tropes drawn from West Africa and the American South, posing timely questions about racial stereotypes. In 2019, Leigh exhibited at the Whitney Biennial and staged a solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, where another work from the series is currently housed.