Leah King

Leah King is a multimedia artist based in Los Angeles. She creates intricately layered visual art pieces and multisensory installations that explore race, gender, power, and queerness through a futurist lens. Her most recent projects repurpose family archives to produce immersive works that feature historical references, religious songs, vocal harmonies, and original electronic music that explore abstracted methods of ancestral storytelling.

King’s visual art practice makes use of found materials including vintage wrapping paper, sewing patterns, glitter, diamond dust, shredded fabric, sequins, rhinestones, and lace, to honor her matrilineal family history of making something beautiful with very little by transforming humble materials into dynamically constructed mixed media works. A musician and songwriter who has scored for film and worked as a vocalist for bands throughout the world, King incorporates audio into her work through sonic installations inspired by house music, experimental jazz, and gospel. Often described as ‘audio collage,’ her compositions include voices of her family, field recordings, and audio samples from well-known and obscure sources.

This past year, King has shown works at Barrett Art Gallery and Sovern Gallery in Los Angeles, Root Division Gallery in San Francisco, and she will be presenting her current research at the Dancecult Conference in Berlin, January 2025. King was a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Political Power Fellow, Converse Rubber Tracks Berlin Artist Resident, and the inaugural artist-in-residence at the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum. Her work has been supported by Brooklyn Arts Council, Berlin Music Board, Museum of the African Diaspora, Center for Cultural Innovation, Puffin Foundation, and Los Angeles Center for Photography. King’s institutional lectures and presentations include San Francisco State University, New York University, and California College of the Arts, where she is an adjunct professor in the Critical Ethnic Studies Department. King is currently a MFA candidate at the USC Roski School of Art and Design where she is completing a masters thesis on Black femme futurity as a healing methodology.