Photo credit: TERN Gallery Bahamas
Ep.183 features Leasho Johnson. Born in 1984, he is a visual artist working primarily in painting, installation, and sculpture. He was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and raised in Sheffield, a small town on the outskirts of Negril. Johnson uses his experience growing up Black, gay, and male to explore concepts around identity within the post-colonial condition. Working at the conjunction of painting and drawing, Leasho combines charcoal, homemade paints, and dyes straddling the line between fluidity and chance, as well as precision and improvisation. Johnson makes characters that live on the edge of perception, visible and invisible simultaneously. His work’s intent is to disrupt historical, political, and social expectations of the Black queer experience.
Leasho Johnson was a fellow of the Jamaica Art Society in 2022 and a Leslie Lohman Museum fellow in 2021. He was recipient of the New Artist Society Scholarship from the School of Art Institute Chicago (SAIC) 2018 – 2020.
His recent residencies include Ruby Cruel in London, 2023 and Fountainhead Residency, Miami, 2022.
Leasho has shown his work in his home country at several National Gallery of Jamaica exhibitions, including the Jamaica Biennial 2012, 2014, 2017, and 2022.
His recent solo exhibitions include “Somewhere between the eyes and the heart”, Western Exhibitions, 2023 “The Love of Men and the Fear of Stones,” Harpers Gallery, New York, 2022 “A Deep Haunting,” TERN Gallery, Nassau Bahamas, 2022
Internationally, Leasho has exhibited in ‘Fragments of Epic Memory’ at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada 2021, ’Resisting Paradise’, Puerto Rico and Montreal, 2019, ‘Jamaican Pulse: Art and Politics from Jamaica and the Diaspora’, Bristol, UK 2016, ‘Jamaican Routes’, Oslo, Norway 2016, ‘Jamaica Jamaica’, Philharmonie, Paris France and Brazil, 2017 and 2018.
His work is in the Public Collections of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Art Gallery Ontario, and ON National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston Jamaica
Leasho is currently based in Chicago, where he works and Lectures at the School of Art Institute Chicago part-time. His work is also part of various notable private collectors, as well as museum permanent collections.
Artist https://www.leashojohnson.com/
Western Exhibitions Somewhere between the eyes and the heart – Western Exhibitions
Chicago Reader https://chicagoreader.com/arts-culture/unveiling-the-depths-leasho-johnson-western-exhibitio ns/
Frieze https://www.frieze.com/article/leasho-johnson-interview-2023
Tern Gallery https://www.terngallery.com/exhibitions/a-deep-haunting
AMFM http://www.amfm.life/?p=2288
Marsha Pearce http://marshapearce.com/qanda/anansi-as-the-path-home/
Contemporary Art Matters https://contemporaryartmatters.com/leasho-johnson/
Kavi Gupta https://kavigupta.com/artists/159-leasho-johnson/
Artist Alliance https://www.artistsallianceinc.org/leasho-johnson/
University of Chicago https://afterlives.hum.uchicago.edu/leasho-johnson/
Repeating Islands https://repeatingislands.com/2022/06/17/art-exhibition-leasho-johnsons-a-deep-haunting/
Art Plugged https://artplugged.co.uk/leasho-johnson-a-deep-haunting/
Anthurium https://anthurium.miami.edu/articles/10.33596/anth.496
AXA Art Prize https://www.axaartprize.com/johnson
‘Reading beyond the tragic,’ 2022
Charcoal, distemper, watercolor, logwood dye, acrylic, oil, oil stick, gold foil, and gesso on paper
61h x 45w in
‘Carry-go-bring-come’, 2022
Charcoal, distemper, watercolor, acrylic, oil, gold foil, and gesso on paper mounted on canvas
25h x 27.13w in
‘To multiply the speed of a man by four (Anansi #17),’ 2022
Charcoal, watercolor, acrylic, logwood dye, oil stick, oil, gold foil, gesso on paper
67 x 52 x 2 inches
‘Buried beyond the pasture without any names (Anansi #22),’ 2023
Charcoal, distemper, watercolor, indigo dye, logwood dye, acrylic, oil, oil stick, gold foil, gold leaf, gesso on paper mounted on canvas
67 x 52 x 2 inches
