Shaun Leonardo with Sara Roffino

Shaun Leonardo’s multidisciplinary work negotiates societal expectations of manhood, namely definitions surrounding black and brown masculinities, along with its notions of achievement, collective identity, and experience of failure. His performance practice, anchored by his work in Assembly – a diversion program for court-involved youth at the Brooklyn-based, non-profit Recess, is participatory and invested in a process of embodiment. Leonardo is a Brooklyn-based artist from Queens, New York City. His work has been featured at The Guggenheim Museum, the High Line, and New Museum, with a recent solo exhibition at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). From fall 2018 through spring 2020, Leonardo enacted socially engaged projects at Pratt Institute as the School of Art, Visiting Fellow.

Sara Roffino is an editor, writer, and researcher. She has worked as the executive editor of Cultured magazine managing editor of the Brooklyn Rail, and the senior/executive editor of Art+Auction. She works as a freelance editor and researcher for artists and art historians and oversees the archives and catalogue raisonné research for painter Larry Poons. Her writing has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Cultured, and Bomb, among many other publications. Sara is an ArtSeen editor of the Brooklyn Rail.