The Embodiment of Assembly: Shaun Leonardo

On February 11th, there was an artist talk called, “From Seeing To Witnessing" by Shaun Leonardo hosted by San José State Art Galleries via zoom meeting. The video is out on the youtube link below and the duration is an hour and thirty-eight minutes. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5dIcZC975w&list=PL9ADbWqAQCptTq-jYzlXRQAj_fnMhNpNO&index=19

(Highlight the link and go to the video site).

At the beginning of the lecture, Shaun starts off with an ice breaker statement to interact with the viewer. The ice breaker activities start at the 8:46 mark.

The activities challenge the viewer to study and attempt to guess Shaun's gesture. The gesture position showed him folding his arms and leaning forward on his back arched while looking up at the left upper corner. The focus of the gesture is not about the meaning or interpretation but collected information that can be transcribed. To describe the gesture, Shaun is leaning in putting pressure on the elbow, he looks tense in the degree of fear, and his eye is directly looking up and seems to strain as he is focusing. The atmosphere of the posture showed discomfort, anxiety, and complication. After a few minutes, he began to unravel the story behind the posture during the pandemic described to be in a void of nothingness, despair, and uncertainty because his thoughts are collected and began to question the state the world is in.

 

 Shaun Leonardo, Freddie Gray (drawings 1–6), 2015. Courtesy of the artist.

Next Shaun began to showcase his PowerPoint that discussed his artwork that depicted Eric Garner’s death incident. The material used six canvas laid horizontal while three on top and bottom. The image is drawn with charcoal showing the same scene of the police brutality choke holding the neck but each drawing is highlighting part of the image. Shaun’s perception of the piece is literal and metaphorical of witnessing Garner getting choked by the arm of the police, vice versa the arm of the police and troops, the environment of the area taking place, and the atmosphere in which the charcoal shines through various tones and shading. Shaun talked about the eulogy of the incident, which the three to four years of the movement, “I can't breathe” spread through the news and media. There were various perspectives taken of the incident that can be told the exact same default description but have plenty of replacement there and translation.

Later on, he showcases a video that is conducted of participants expressing their stories about the mentality and body language describing their experience during a pandemic while detained in the juvenile hall. The video showed some trajectory exercises of individuals’ emotional baggage of each are expressive in the movement of despair, loss in fear, and isolation.

A takeaway from this lecture that stood out to me is the visual storytelling of his community and himself conducting a cohesive narrative about diversion, trauma, and criminality. Their ability to participate in various exercises and produce pieces that are relevant to the community is beyond a powerful embodiment of assembly. A particular answer that I resonate with Shaun’s reason is when creating a six canvas of Eric Garner’s incident that is sensitive and surreal, one could say that they feel emotional and attach that could hinder their process in the drawing. However, Shaun says that drawing was relieving and felt charged up because the art tool is a tactic art that tells the story and process of the piece. His answer is relevant to me because I always believe that art can be an anecdote that calms the viewer and artist to illustrate a story and moment that is implemented into the piece.