ARTIST STATEMENT
Is queer (or fat, or trans, or disabled) a skill?
I consider my work to be the virtues of my being, my internal dialogue, evidence of my transformation. An accumulation of both physical and emotional labor. Spoken in the language of protest, permission to expand as needed. Printed in the language of poetry, repeating, repeating. Queerness in all its forms, the ultimate relief. I am so close to not even questioning what is and is not enough. I am proving myself to myself: watch me. Perfection in all its forms, the ultimate defeat.
I gravitate toward constructing and interacting with ephemeral materials; tape, paper, foam, raw clay. The unstable nature of their output mirrors the temporality of existing in a body and helps me uncover the potentiality of queerness in both process and form. I want the evidence (scars) of exposure (survival) to be clear on the paper (skin.) This does cause damage (changes,) which I would call experience (growth.) Living in a body is like living one long erasure poem.
BIO
ev Leto (they/them, b. 1982, New Jersey, United States) is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Philadelphia, PA. Their practice centers the fat, queer, trans body as a site of transformation, exploitation, and liberation. Their works accumulate excessive de-commodified labor and playfully weaponized humor, probing the politics of queerness through performance, video, sculpture, poetics, and print media.
ev is currently an MFA candidate in sculpture at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture. They hold a BFA from Middle Tennessee State University, an MA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa, and a Graduate Certificate in Book Arts from the University of Iowa Center for the Book. They have exhibited at the South Bend Museum of Art, Janet Turner Print Museum, Bradbury Art Museum, Brooklyn Art Library, Public Space One, Zeitgeist Gallery, and The Museum of Contemporary Art Nashville amongst others.