Juliana Cerqueira Leite: Orogenesi

Brazilian artist Juliana Cerqueira Leite's artist book following her solo exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum, Naples in 2019.Orogenesi is the culmination of two years of Cerqueira Leite's research on Pompeii and the ‘calchi,’ the plaster cast bodies excavated in this world-famous archeological site. The artist connects these to both Martha Graham’s modern choreography and to NASA's space exploration. The show premiers new sculptures which are displayed in the National Archaeological Museum’s iconic Villa dei Papiri rooms. Investigating both ancient and recent pasts through disparate narratives, Cerqueira Leite stitches together a timeline of her own making. At the centre of the exhibition is her own body pushed to its physical limits, acting as a metaphor for psychological and politicised states of being.The publication includes an Introduction by Mario Codognato and an essay by Dehlia Hannah & Nadim Samman.

Juliana Cerqueira Leite (born 1981) is a Brazilian/American sculptor based in New York. She has exhibited her works in sculpture, photography, drawing and video internationally since graduating from the Slade School of Fine Art (London) in 2006, as recipient of the Kenneth Armitage Sculpture Prize. Working with her own body, often inside of large volumes of material, she engages the history, contexts and possible futures of representing the human form. Cerqueira Leite was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2019 in support of her solo exhibition Orogenesi at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, Italy. In 2016 she was awarded the Furla Art Prize for her contribution to the 5th Moscow Young Art Biennale. Cerqueira Leite has exhibited her work in group shows in venues such as the Sculpture Center, (New York), Saatchi Gallery (London), the 2017 Venice Biennale Antarctic Pavilion, Marres House for Contemporary Culture (Maastricht, NL), and Hordaland Kunstsenter for the 2019 Bergen Assembly. Solo shows include Instituto Tomie Ohtake (São Paulo), Cass Sculpture Foundation (UK), Regina Rex and Arsenal Contemporary (New York). She is represented by TJ Boulting (London), Nogueras Blanchard (Spain) and Casa Triângulo (São Paulo).