Joshua Leon

Based in Vienna, Joshua Leon is a writer, artist, and educator whose practice operates at the intersection of site-specific archival research, text-based processes, and poetic writing. His work explores personal memories, historical research, and questions surrounding the political and aesthetic dimensions of witnessing. Joshua Leon’s research-led projects and exhibitions have been presented across diverse international platforms, including Chisenhale Gallery in London, Kunsthalle Wien, Kunstverein München, CAPC Bordeaux, La Ferme du Buisson, the Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration in Paris, and FRAC Lorraine in Metz. He has also undertaken residencies at PART in Vienna, Mahler+LeWitt in Italy, CAPC in Bordeaux, Kunstverein München, and PINK in Manchester.

Driven by an ongoing inquiry into how historical narratives can be transformed into textual, sculptural, sonic, and display-based forms, Joshua Leon utilizes an embodied research methodology. His work draws on archival materials, examining topics such as medieval antisemitic imagery (the Judensau), the social history of Jewish women’s labour and garment-making, as well as his own family’s archival histories. In addition to his visual practice, Leon is a published author. His book The Process was awarded the inaugural Emerging Art Foundation writing prize, and his forthcoming trade publication with UK publisher Extraordinary Books registers loss of life and culture across European states, using archival material to trace and record the life of certain erasures.

During his time on residency in Mönchengladbach he will be primarily focused on preparing new work for his forthcoming co-commission between Portikus, Frankfurt, and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen — which will be his first major solo institutional exhibitions in Germany and Europe. This work is accompanied by a publication, they mark a significant step into the European context of his research. The work draws on research into the Judensau—a medieval antisemitic image found across the region—together with research into Jewish social history of Jewish women’s labour and garment-making, and his family’s archival histories asking how these histories might be transformed into textual, sculptural, sonic, and display based forms.