California African American Museum - Los Angeles, USA
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A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration
group show
Born in 1977 in New York, New York, USA
Lives and works between New York, New York and Houston, Texas
Leslie Hewitt’s hybrid approach to photography and sculpture revisits the still life genre from a post-minimalist perspective. Her geometric compositions, which she frames and crystallizes through the disciplines of photography and film theory, respectively, are spare assemblages of ordinary effects and materials, suggesting the porosity between intimate and sociopolitical histories. Whether discreetly arranged in layers on wooden planks or stacked before a wall in her studio, Hewitt’s objects often include personal mementos such as family pictures, as well as books and vintage magazines that reference the black literary and popular-culture ephemera of her upbringing. Interested in the mechanisms behind the construction of meaning and memory, she decisively challenges both by unfolding manifestly formal, rather than didactic, connections in her heteroclite juxtapositions. She puts pressure on physical space as the ultimate frame of her photo sculptures by displaying some of them leaning against a wall, as they were originally conceived. Hewitt further works with site-specific installation and film as modalities to contend equally with the notions of space and time.
education
2004 Yale University, M.F.A.
2001–03 New York University, Africana Studies / Cultural Studies
2000 The Cooper Union, B.F.A.
solo shows
2023
- Please Stay Home: Darrell Ellis in Dialogue with Leslie Hewitt and Wardell Milan, Carpenter Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
2022
- Index Array, Perrotin Tokyo, Japan
- Dia Bridgehampton, Bridgehampton, NY
- The Artist's Eye | Reading Room, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
2020
- Anatomy of a Flower and Other Studio Experiments, Perrotin, New York, NY
2019
- Reading Room, Perrotin, New York, NY
2018
- Perrotin, Paris, France
- Perrotin, Seoul, South Korea
2017
- Leslie Hewitt, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY
2016
- New Pictures: Leslie Hewitt, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis MN
- Collective Stance: Featuring work in collaboration with Bradford Young, The Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY
- Leslie Hewitt: Untitled, Olga Korper Gallery Inc, Toronto, Canada
- Collective Stance, The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada
2014
- Untitled (Structures): Leslie Hewitt in collaboration with Bradford Young, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
2013
- Leslie Hewitt, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY
2012
- Leslie Hewitt: Sudden Glare of the Sun, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
- Untitled (Structures): Leslie Hewitt in collaboration with Bradford Young, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA; traveled to The Menil Collection, Houston, TX
2011
- Blue Skies, Warm Sunlight, D’Amelio Terras, New York, NY
- Momentum Series 15: Leslie Hewitt, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Boston, MA
2010
- Untitled (Level): Leslie Hewitt in collaboration with Bradford Young, Studio Museum Harlem, New York, NY
- Leslie Hewitt: On Beauty, Objects, and Dissonance, The Kitchen, New York, NY
2009
- Riffs On Real Time, Clough-Hanson Gallery, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN
- Art Statements, Art 40 Basel, Basel, Switzerland
- the everyday, Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College CCS, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
2007
- Replica of a Lost Original, Artists Space, New York, NY
- Leslie Hewitt: It’s Just a Feeling, D’Amelio Terras, New York, NY
2006
- Make it Plain, LAXART, Los Angeles, CA
group shows
2023
- A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, California African American Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA (forthcoming)
- The Weight of Words, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, United Kingdom
- Black and White - An Achromatic Group Show (Of Paintings), Collaborations by Tania and Thomas Asbæk, Copenhagen, Denmark
- A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, Brooklyn Musuem, New York, NY
- The weather is uncertain tonight, as is my soul, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Heiligenkreuzerhof, Vienna, Austria
2022
- Wet Conceptualism, The Opening Gallery, New York, NY (forthcoming)
- Photographic Pictures, curated by Anne Collier, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, NY
- Currency: Photography Beyond Capture, 8th Edition of the Triennial of Photography Hamburg, curated by Koyo Kouoh, Rasha Salti, Gabriella Beckhurst Feijoo, and Oluremi C. Onabanjo, with Cale Garrido; Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany
- A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, Mississippi Art Museum, Jackson, MI; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
- Lux et Veritas, curated by Bonnie Clearwater, NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, FL
- Elegies: Still Lifes in Contemporary Art, curated by Monique Long, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA; Telfair Museum, Savannah, GA
- Dwellers pt. I, curated by Lucien Terras, Perrotin New York, NY
- Dwellers pt. II, curated by Lucien Terras, Perrotin Paris, France
- Family Album: Dannielle Bowman, Janna Ireland and Contemporary Works from LACMA, LACMA Charles White Elementary School Gallery, Los Angeles, California
2021
- There is a Woman in Every Color: Black Women in Art, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME
- Family Album, Los Angeles County Musuem of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA
- Red, curated by Nico Wheadon, Welancora Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
- Mining the Archive, Yancey Richardson, New York, NY
- There's, There, There, Hauser & Wirth, Southampton, New York
- Off The Record, organized by Ashley James, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
- Just looking, Still looking, Always looking, Aranya Art Center, Qinhuangdao, China
- La Boîte-en-Valise, curated by Wim Peeters and Marie Denkens, virtual exhibition by Office Baroque: https://www.la-boite-en-valise.com
2020
- Radical Empathy, Compound, Los Angeles, CA
- Pictures, Revisited, curated by Douglas Eklund, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
- On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women at Yale, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
- Uptown Triennial 2020, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY
- Storage_, Storage Projects, New York, NY
- Sculpture Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI
- American Women: The Infinite Journey, curated by Marie Maertens, La Patinoire Royale, Brussels, Belgium
2019
- Place, Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX
- Prisoner of Love, curated by Naomi Beckwith, MCA Chicago, IL
- Hinge Pictures: Eight Women Artists Occupy the Third Dimension, curated by Andrea Andersson, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA
2018
- The 57th Carnegie International, The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
- Out of Easy Reach, curated by Allison Glenn, Gallery 400 at University of Illinois in collaboration with DePaul Art Museum and Rebuild Foundation, Chicago, IL; will travel to Grunwald Gallery at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana
- Screenscapes, curated by Vik Muniz, Barney Kulok and Lucas Blalock, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, Brazil
- Nothing Stable under Heaven, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
2017
- Out of Easy Reach, curated by Allison Glenn, Gallery 400 in collaboration with DePaul Art Museum and Rebuild Foundation, Chicago, IL
- An unassailable and monumental dignity, Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, Toronto, Canada
- Woman with a Camera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
- Fond Illusions, Perrotin, New York, NY
- The 11th White Columns Annual, White Columns, New York, NY
2016
- Resistance, Protest, Resilience, Minneapolis Institute of Art Minneapolis, MN
- Crisis of Presence, Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland
- A Matter of Memory: Photography as Object in the Digital Age, George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY
- Ordinary Pictures, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
- Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art
- Line of Flight, The Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY
- Statements: African American Art from the Museum’s Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX
- Signal Noise, Simon Preston Gallery, New York, NY
2015
- Jennie C. Jones, Josephine Halvorson, Leslie Hewitt, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY
- Time/ Image, Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, Houston, TX
- A Story within a Story, Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA), Göteborg, Sweden
- Photo-Poetics: An Anthology, Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle, Berlin, Germany; traveled to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
- A Room of One's Own, YAncey Richardson, New York, NY
- An Exhibition to Benefit Dancing Foxes Press, Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York, NY
An Unfixed Image: The Photographic Across Media, The College of New Jersey, Ewing Township, NJ
- Picture Thing, Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
- Speaking of People, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
- Power Structures, P!, New York, NY
2014
- ICA Collection: In Context, Institute of Contemporary Art/Bston, Boston, MA
- The Material Image, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY
- Material Histories, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
- On Artworks, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
- A Public Fiction, In the Room: Leslie Hewitt, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA
2013
- Palimpsest, Carol Jazzar Contemporary Art, Miami, FL
- Under Another Name, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
- Untitled (Structures), Leslie Hewitt in collaboration with Bradford Young, Lofoten International Art Festival, Svolvær and Kabelvåg in the Lofoten archipelago,Norway
- Test Pattern, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
- Body Language, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY - Homebodies, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
- 19 New Acquisitions, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
- Herbert Matter, Leslie Hewitt, Louis-Emile Durandelle, Louise Lawler,
Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY
2012
- La Bibliothéque Comme Mémoire, Galerie Gabrielle Maubrie, Paris, France
- Terrain Shift, Works from the Miller Meigs Collection, Lumber Room, Portland, OR
- Blues for Smoke, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; traveled to the Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
2011
- The Anxiety of Photography, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO; traveled to The Jones Center at The Contemporary Austin, Austin, Texas
- Human Nature: Contemporary Art from the Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
2010
- Maisterra Valbuena Galería, Madrid, Spain
- Lush Life – Wolf Tickets, Salon 94 Freemans, New York, NY
- At Home-Not At Home: The Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg Collection, Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College CCS, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
- Mutiny Seemed a Probability, Fondazione Giuliani per l’arte contemporanea, Rome, Italy
- After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY
- The Front Room, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
2009
- 30 Seconds Off an Inch, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
- New Photography 2009, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
- The Garden of Forking Paths, Maisterra Valbuena Galería, Madrid, Spain
- Cumanana, Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta, GA
- Photodimensional, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, IL
- The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm, Tina Kim Gallery, New York, NY
2008
- Untitled (Vicarious): Photographing the Constructed Object, Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY
- The Fullness of Time, Arndt & Partner, Zurich, Switzerland
- New Intuitions, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
- After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
- 2008 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
2007
- Alabama, Office Baroque Gallery, Antwerpen, Belgium
2006
- Civil Restitutions, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, UK
- Study Hall: The Carbonist School, Eyedrum Art/Musical, Atlanta, GA
- Double Exposure, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT
2005
- Being There, Cuchifritos Gallery / Project Space, New York, NY
- Happenstance, Harris Lieberman Gallery, New York, NY
- Gimme Shelter, Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta, GA
- Talk to the Land, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY
- Frequency, Studio Museum in Harlem, Harlem, New York
- Make it Now, Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY
public collections
American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY
Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario, Canada
Banco Espirito Santo, Lisbon, Portugal
Bowdoin College Museum of Art
, Brunswick, ME
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA
Fogg Art Musuem at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Fondazione Giuliani, Rome, Italy
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, NY
Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
Kemper Art Museum, Kansas City, MO
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
The Menil Collection, Houston, TX
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, IL
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Perez Art Museum, Miami, FL
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Studio Museum in Harlem, Harlem, NY
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
awards
2022
- Anyonymous Was A Woman Award
2020
- Guggenheim Fellow, Fine Arts
2015
- Teiger Mentor Arts, Cornell University
2014
- Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award
- USA Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz Fellow
2010
- Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize
2009
- Foundation for Contemporary Art’s Grant
- Urban Visionaries: Emerging Talent, The Cooper Union, New York, NY
2008
- Art Matters Grant
- The Helene Rubinstein Foundation Fellowship Award
2007
- The Helene Rubinstein Foundation Fellowship Award
- The Rema Hort Mann Foundation Prize, New York, NY
- The Eliza Prize, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX
Selected Bibliography
2022
Bell Brown, Jessica, and Ryan N. Dennis. A Movement in Every Direction: A Great Migration Critical Reader. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022.
Brier, Jessica D. On the Grid: Ways of Seeing in Print. Poughkeepsie: Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, 2022.
Hewitt, Leslie. “Leslie Hewitt, Cornell Watson.” Interview by Cornell Watson. The Moderns Art Notes Podcast, April 28, 2022. Audio, 80:00.
Kuzma, Marta, Linda Nochlin, Angela Y. Davis, and Angie Keefer. Yale: History of an Art School. Cologne: Walther & Franz König, 2022.
Pelizzari, Antonella, and Arden Sherman. 125th Street: Photography in Harlem. Munich: Hirmer Publishers, Hunter East Harlem Gallery, Hunter College, 2022.
Poku-Adusei, Nana. Taking Stakes in the Unknown. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022.
2021
Cooper, Helen, Marta Kuzma, and Linda Konheim Kramer. On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women at Yale. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021.
Montague, Kenneth, Teju Cole, Mark Sealy, and Liz Ikiriko. As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic. New York: Aperture, 2021.
Tillet, Salamishah. “An Artistic Legacy: How the Studio Museum in Harlem transformed the art world - and why its influence has never loomed larger.” Harper’s Bazaar, March 2021.
2020
Liberty, Megan. “Leslie Hewitt with Megan N. Liberty.” The Brooklyn Rail, November 11, 2020.
Loos, Ted. “Thinking Outside Judd’s Boxes: His Legacy Still Shapes Artists.” The New York Times, February 28, 2020.
Maertens, Marie. American Women: The Infinite Journey. Brussels: La Patinoire Royale, 2020.
Miller, Ken, Wolfgang Tillmans, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Guy Bourdin, Saul Leiter, Barbara Kasten, Man Ray, Matthew Stone, John Divola, Imogen Cunningham, David Benjamin Sherry, Sam Falls, and Harley Weir Poster. Pictures. New York: There, 2020.
Sculpture Milwaukee. Los Angeles: Edition One Books, 2020.
2019
Andersson, Andrea. Hinge Pictures: Eight Women Artists Occupy the Third Dimension. New Orleans: Siglio/Contemporary Arts Center, 2019.
D’Souza, Aruna. “The artist composes a complex revision of Harlem’s National Memorial African Bookstore.” 4Columns, September 20, 2019.
Fateman, Johanna. “Leslie Hewitt.” The New Yorker, October 21, 2019.
Groeneboer, Jonah. “Leslie Hewitt.” Artforum, October 3, 2019.
Hewitt, Leslie and Cay Sophie Rabinowitz. Leslie Hewitt. New York: Osmos, 2019.
Hewitt, Leslie and Ellen Y. Tani. Set Theory. New York: Perrotin, 2019.
Laster, Paul. “Focus on Photography: 7 Not-To-Be-Missed Solo Shows in New York.” Galerie Magazine, September 17, 2019.
Liberty, Megan. “Leslie Hewitt.” The Brooklyn Rail, March 7, 2019.
Moffitt, Evan. “The Must-See Exhibitions in New York This Autumn.” Frieze Magazine, September 13, 2019.
Nakamori, Yasufumi. “Yasufumi Nakamori on the crucial role of portrait photography.” Financial Times, May 11, 2019.
Norman, Lee Ann. “Eight Visual Artists Use Duchamp’s Provocation as a Springboard” Hyperallergic, May 3, 2019.
Punj, Rajesh. “Relationship as Meaning: A Leslie Hewitt Interview.” Art & Deal, March 2019.
Reid, Tiana. “An Artist Who Is Unsettling the Centuries-Old Traditions of Still Life.” The New York Times, September 11, 2019.
Schaffner, Ingrid, Koyo Kouho, and Jennifer Burris. Dispatch. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum of Art, 2019.
Tani, Ellen. “Leslie Hewitt.” Duel Magazine, March 2019.
2018
“Artists in the Exhibition: Leslie Hewitt.” Carnegie International, 57th Edition (Winter 2018): 68-69.
“Leslie Hewitt’s Art Language.” Harper’s Bazaar Korea, April 5, 2018.
Lynne, Jessica. “Reconsidering the Architecture of Memory.” Cultured, October 2018.
Tenaglia, Francesco. “Exactness: Leslie Hewitt.” Mousse, November 18, 2018.
2017
Wolkoff, Julia. “Leslie Hewitt.” Art in America, September 2017.
2016
Crosby, Eric, Thomas Beard, Lane Relyea, and Eva Respini. Ordinary Pictures. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2016.
Cwynar, Kari. “Leslie Hewitt.” Artforum, April 2016.
Davies, Jon. “Leslie Hewitt.” Frieze Magazine, March 15, 2016.
Gopnik, Blake. “Leslie Hewitt and the (African) American Dream.” Artnet News, May 19, 2016.
Hostetler, Lisa, and William T. Green. A Matter of Memory: Photography as Object in the Digital Age. Rochester: George Eastman Museum, 2016.
Kennedy, Randy. “Haunted by History and the Nature of Time.” The New York Times, April 22, 2016.
Larson, Kristine. “Memory Objects: Leslie Hewitt trains her lens on photography’s charged history.” Modern Painters, May 2016.
Schriber, Abbe. “SculptureCenter.” Art in America, November 2016.
