Through an interdisciplinary practice grounded in site-specific installation and painting, I address the complexities of multi-ethnic identities to create a more body-affirming and queer lineage for painting and architecture. Clues and auguries about the difficult times we find ourselves in filter their way into the visible and inherited landscapes around us.
Leeza Meksin is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist working in painting, installation, public art and multiples. Born in the former Soviet Union, she immigrated to the United States with her family in 1989. Her work investigates parallels between conventions of painting, architecture and our bodies.
Meksin has created site-specific installations for CLEA RSKY (2021), The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2019-20), The Brooklyn Academy of Music (2018-19), National Academy of Design (2018), The Uptown Triennial at The Lenfest Center for the Arts (2017), Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (2016), The Kitchen, NYC (2015), BRIC Media Arts, Brooklyn (2015), Regina Rex (2014, 2010), Brandeis University (2014), the former Donnell branch of the New York Public Library (2011), and in a National Endowment for the Arts funded project in New Haven, CT for Artspace (2012).
In 2015 Meksin received the emerging artist grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and in 2021 she was awarded the NYSCA/NYFA artist fellowship in Interdisciplinary Work. In 2019 she was the artist in residence at The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. Her work has been featured in Bomb, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Chicago Tribune, and The Village Voice, among other publications. In 2013 Meksin co-founded Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run gallery and curatorial collective in Brooklyn that she continues to co-direct. Meksin received a MFA from The Yale School of Art, a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA/MA in Comparative Literature and Humanities from The University of Chicago. In 2021 Meksin joined the faculty at Cornell University in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP).