If you ask Leah King what makes her art so successful, she might tell you that it’s because she’s cursed. As King meticulously cuts up old family photographs and arranges collages and musical compositions alike, her fervor and vulnerability combine in perfect harmony. A multidisciplinary artist with a focus on immersive sound installation and mixed media collage, King has the unique ability to move audiences regardless of artistic medium.
Just four years ago, King was feeling restless as her DJ gigs as an electronic musician dwindled, when the Coronavirus pandemic caused a mass cancellation of in-person events. Exhausted from staring at screens during the lockdown, King, a former classical dancer, listened to her body’s need to move, create and use her hands. With visual art, King seems to have found her stride.
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“I got a studio space and spent about 100 bucks on art supplies and just started making collage, and immediately it took off, and I just started making whatever was the most authentic expression of what I felt like was going on inside,” King said.
King then began using found materials to keep her newfound visual art practice sustainable. Since then, collages featuring family photographs have become central to her work. Although these artworks feature personal archives and portraits of relatives, many people have told King that they see themselves in the work.
According to King, “the most fundamental aspect of art creation is trying to listen to what’s going on inside because then you can create the most authentic art.”
In a time of glossy, digital and artificially-generated art, audiences respond well to the frayed edges, glitter and other evidence that the work was touched by human hands and hearts.
According to Robert Brady, a second-year Roski School of Art and Design master’s student studying curatorial practices and the public sphere, his colleague King inspires.
“I love how she incorporates family archives into her creative practice using found objects like hand-cut paper, glitter, obviously glitter sequins, rhinestones that really create discussions around the themes of race, gender, power dynamics and queerness and identities around those.”
Not often found in a gallery space, glitter evokes childhood memories and links audiences to their pasts and futures. Through this authenticity, King is able to connect with many.
Her uncle, Bruce King, is not surprised at his niece’s ability to excel at multiple art forms. Although they live on opposite coasts, seeing announcements about her upcoming shows, including work featuring old photographs of him, has enriched their relationship. He’s more than happy to be featured.
“She’s always been a creative soul,” he said. “It’s incredibly flattering that I live large enough in her life to be included in her output.”
For Leah King, vulnerability is a superpower.
“It’s hard to connect as humans … it’s the same as in an audio, when someone expresses vulnerability, we’re all like, ‘Oh, what’s that? What is that?’”
By wearing her heart on her sleeve and allowing others to see her through her art, King creates a space and a conversation that many people want to be part of.
The synthesis of audio and visual art allows for a crossover for those who typically favor one or the other. King explains that her creativity comes from the fusion of multiple identities too.
“Existing at the intersection is a form of weightlessness because [I’m] not tied to one place or another.”
The effect is not just artmaking but also worldbuilding.
Allowing art to speak for itself is not always easy, but King has found her sound. She tries to organize what’s in her mind in tandem with organizing a million paper fragments into a collage.
“That process of attempting both a self-reflection and a sort of proactive imagining of the potentials for what we can be in the future is really what I’m thinking of.”
The first professional artist in her family, King sets herself apart in the artistic world by creating sounds and images that envision the future more than they recount the past.
“I’m more interested in thinking about possibility of different futures that might be more fulfilling to [them] than what [they’re] thinking of in this moment. Because the now isn’t always the most wonderful, and it’s okay to acknowledge that.”
This refreshing futurism is in full volume throughout her work, which will be on view when her thesis exhibition opens at the Roski Mateo Gallery on May 1, 2025. It is also apparent in her collage series “Taking Up Outer Space,” which includes “Bruce,” featuring her uncle. “Bruce” will be on display throughout the remainder of the school year at “Converge+Vertex: Traversing the minor gesture of timeline” at Santa Monica College’s Barrett Art Gallery.
So why does a force of nature like Leah King think she’s cursed? Others wonder how she manages to always make more, but she has been an artist for so long that it’s become second nature.
“[I’m] cursed if I don’t do it, I’m not okay, so I just keep doing it.”
King has such an expansive world of ideas in her mind that it’s unsurprising that it feels like a curse to be compelled to work non-stop, creating artistic representation of her inner world and vision for a better future in the universe. As for the city of Los Angeles? It’s blessed to have her. Perhaps Brady says it best:
“She’s one of the hardest working artists I know absolutely really inspires me to push myself more as a student, as a curator, as a person, and just a really good friend. So I’m just really grateful for her, right?”
