Ariana
Leon
Sculptor | Interdisciplinary Artist | Juried Panel Member
About Ariana
Ariana Leon is a sculptor and installation artist whose work explores the unstable boundaries between bodies, objects, architecture, and language. Through fabricated sculpture and architectural interventions, she works with materials that sag, swell, puncture, and leak to consider containment, memory, desire, and vulnerability. Engaging the concept of “leaky bodies,” Leon considers the body as porous rather than self-contained, bringing softness, rupture, humour, and excess into conversation with hard forms and structures. Her work oscillates between the seductive and the unsettling, using humour and play to approach experiences that resist articulation.

Leon holds an MFA in Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and a BFA in Photography and Video from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work has been exhibited across the United States and Canada. Leon is currently a fellow of the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in NYC
The Body
Is Still Here
I make things that are kind of… sticky. Not literally - though sometimes, yes - but the kind that happens between your eyes and your stomach. My work begins where words fail - at the edges of rupture, in the quiet after impact. It asks us to feel pain without spectacle, torment without reenactment, abuse without reenlisting the harmed body into visibility. I do not reproduce trauma; I trace what lingers - command, silence, obedience.
My sculptures inhabit the realm of leaky bodies - forms with wounded or invented openings, bodies that cannot hold themselves closed, architectures that behave like flesh, objects that remember pain. Their logic is built from misinterpretation, from the debris of childhood understanding. I honour the collapse of language that accompanies overwhelm. Play becomes a lure, a seduction that lowers guards just long enough for the wound to surface. I wield camp: amplified, exaggerated, disarming. The moment you laugh, you are caught. The moment you enjoy, you are implicated.
My work lives inside the pause where humour and horror touch, where tenderness leaks through armour, where mastery is unreachable, and repetition offers no comfort. The body is neither healed nor broken. It is simply still here.
Rexhibit & Ariana
2026
●
Jury
Forms of Attention
Juror
Ariana Leon joined the juried panel for Forms of Attention, contributing her professional perspective to the review and selection process for Rexhibit’s in-person exhibition in Shanghai.
2026
●
EXHIBITION
SOLO EXHIBITION
Artist
Rexhibit presented a dedicated solo exhibition of Ariana Leon’s work, examining bodily instability, touch, discomfort, domestic forms, and the tension between attraction and repulsion.
2026
●
iNTERVIEW
FEATURED INTERVIEW
Interviewee
Following her participation in Shared Ground, Rexhibit presented an in-depth interview with Ariana Leon examining the relationship between trauma, embodiment, material behavior, architecture, humor, and bodily perception across her sculptural practice.
2026
●
EXHIBITION
Shared Ground
Gold Award Recipient
Ariana Leon participated in Rexhibit’s juried group exhibition Shared Ground with It’s coming, like too much (2024), receiving the Gold Award. The exhibition explored coexistence, connection, belonging, and the tensions that shape shared experience.
Selected Works
Ariana
Leon
Sculptor | Interdisciplinary Artist | Rexhibit Juror
About Ariana
Ariana Leon is a sculptor and installation artist whose work explores the unstable boundaries between bodies, objects, architecture, and language. Through fabricated sculpture and architectural interventions, she works with materials that sag, swell, puncture, and leak to consider containment, memory, desire, and vulnerability. Engaging the concept of “leaky bodies,” Leon considers the body as porous rather than self-contained, bringing softness, rupture, humour, and excess into conversation with hard forms and structures. Her work oscillates between the seductive and the unsettling, using humour and play to approach experiences that resist articulation.

Leon holds an MFA in Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and a BFA in Photography and Video from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work has been exhibited across the United States and Canada. Leon is currently a fellow of the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in NYC
The Body
Is Still Here
I make things that are kind of… sticky. Not literally - though sometimes, yes - but the kind that happens between your eyes and your stomach. My work begins where words fail - at the edges of rupture, in the quiet after impact. It asks us to feel pain without spectacle, torment without reenactment, abuse without reenlisting the harmed body into visibility. I do not reproduce trauma; I trace what lingers - command, silence, obedience.
My sculptures inhabit the realm of leaky bodies - forms with wounded or invented openings, bodies that cannot hold themselves closed, architectures that behave like flesh, objects that remember pain. Their logic is built from misinterpretation, from the debris of childhood understanding. I honour the collapse of language that accompanies overwhelm. Play becomes a lure, a seduction that lowers guards just long enough for the wound to surface. I wield camp: amplified, exaggerated, disarming. The moment you laugh, you are caught. The moment you enjoy, you are implicated.
My work lives inside the pause where humour and horror touch, where tenderness leaks through armour, where mastery is unreachable, and repetition offers no comfort. The body is neither healed nor broken. It is simply still here.
Rexhibit & Ariana
2026
●
Jury
Forms of Attention
Juror
Ariana Leon joined the juried panel for Forms of Attention, contributing her professional perspective to the review and selection process for Rexhibit’s in-person exhibition in Shanghai.
2026
●
EXHIBITION
SOLO EXHIBITION
Artist
Rexhibit presented a dedicated solo exhibition of Ariana Leon’s work, examining bodily instability, touch, discomfort, domestic forms, and the tension between attraction and repulsion.
2026
●
iNTERVIEW
FEATURED INTERVIEW
Interviewee
Following her participation in Shared Ground, Rexhibit presented an in-depth interview with Ariana Leon examining the relationship between trauma, embodiment, material behavior, architecture, humor, and bodily perception across her sculptural practice.
2026
●
EXHIBITION
Shared Ground
Gold Award Recipient
Ariana Leon participated in Rexhibit’s juried group exhibition Shared Ground with It’s coming, like too much (2024), receiving the Gold Award. The exhibition explored coexistence, connection, belonging, and the tensions that shape shared experience.
Selected Works
Brooklyn, NY
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Newsletter
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
© 2026 Rexhibit. All rights reserved.