Excited to be introduce Shaun Leonardo during the CAA 114th Annual Conference Annual Artist Interviews!
Shaun Leonardo will be in conversation with Dawit Petros.

Shaun Leonardo’s multidisciplinary work negotiates societal expectations of manhood, usually through the definitions surrounding black and brown masculinities, along with its notions of achievement, collective identity, and experience of failure. His performance practice is participatory and invested in a process of embodiment.

Leonardo’s fifteen-plus-year career as an artist and arts administrator has centered on community engagement, public programming, and experimental pedagogy. From 2016 to 2024, Leonardo played a pivotal role at Recess, co-directing its evolution as a socially engaged arts organization and launching the Assembly diversion program. Based in Brooklyn, Leonardo received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is a recipient of support from Creative Capital, Guggenheim Social Practice, Art for Justice, and A Blade of Grass. His work has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum, the High Line, the New Museum, and Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, and has been profiled in The New York Times and on CNN. He is Executive Director of Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens.

The CAA114 Annual Artist Interviews will be held on Friday, February 20, 4:30–7:00 p.m. CT at the Hilton Chicago. This event will also be livestreamed via YouTube.

Established in 1997, Annual Artist Interviews remains a highly anticipated event at CAA conferences. Each year, two prominent artists are featured, providing a unique opportunity for CAA members and conference attendees to hear artists in dialogue with an interviewer about their life, work, and career trajectory.