$5K TO $200K
ArtPrize 10 winner Le'Andra Leseur turned a $5k grant into a $200k installation. Her work embodies the pain, the power, and the beauty of #blacklivesmatter.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI
I flew out to Michigan to Art Prize to envelop myself with the more than 1,200 artists and tens of thousands of people all converging on the welcoming city of Grand Rapids. Little did I know how profoundly moved I would be by the caliber of the artwork, the discussions, and inclusion by the people that I met during my time there.
One place in particular captured my heart very quickly, which was at Site:Lab, a former Christian Ed Academy turned Social Services Office serving an impoverished and predominantly black population was now a liberated space and venue for ArtPrize.
On the second floor there was a dark room that seemed private and cared for even though it was dimly lit. At the end of the hall was a space, a canvas on the floor, marked out with black squares. I met Le’Andra LeSeur as she entered the space, carrying a 35 lb cinderblock, put it down in front of me on one of the squares, wiped her bare feet and went off to fetch another. Her piece, entitled “Brown, Carmine, and Blue” evolved over a 2 week period where she carried these blocks up flights of stairs, painted, built with them, kneeled, danced, and screamed, sometimes for as much as 8 hours a day.
“…the space was pretty dark. So I told him, ‘I don’t want any images with flash or anything like that, I just really just want you to take images that evoke this feeling’. Because that’s what I want people to feel when they actually come in the space — maybe they don’t see me right away but they walk in and they feel something. I wanted people who were looking at the documentation and the pictures to also feel that.”
Le’Andra built this installation and performance by using a $5,000 grant she won the previous year at ArtPrize. This year she would go on to win the $200,000 juries award.
We invited Le’Andra into the Mobile Incubator to tell her story. The most predominant theme of Le’andra’s work was Black Joy. Every piece of story was extremely physical, emotional, and connected to a transcendence beyond pain. So many artists centered themselves around their anger, their frustration, and ways to have a voice in an oppressed society. Le’andra was clearly stating each of these concepts physically, yet the end of every day, she was joyful, dancing, eating, and carrying these conversations further.
And then she won the $200,000 big one. How profound to watch and feel along with someone going through this transformation—of something that others along the way told her she “deserved”, but really what I witnessed her telling herself that and being freed by it. And her winning wasn’t the deserving, but the earning it through her own determination to be safe in comfortable in all of her emotions, and still somehow be joyful. She was rewarded for it because it was willing, it was real, and everyone could feel that. It was mind-blowing to me, personally and professionally.
- Jes Thayer, August 15, 2018
DOCU-SHORT
INTERVIEW
PODCAST
DISCUSSION
Le’andra was able to turn a $5,000 grant into a project that won the $200,000 juror’s award at ArtPrize. Luck was a factor, but Le’andra made every dollar count. In the podcast she breaks down how she spent the $5,000, pricing out different materials like projectors, and comparing different quotes for hiring things out like the neon flag.
Q: How could you bootstrap $5,000 to make $200,000?
If Le’andra won the $12,500, she said she would be able to do her next project a little bigger, and her vision for the $200,000 award is much larger. “For the $200,000, there’s no way I could do something just for myself. I would like to do something for black women in the arts.”
She details how she would proceed if she won nothing. “If I got nothing I would walk away with a smile because I was able to do something that wasn’t possible three years ago.”
Q: Imagine you’re nominated but turned down for a $200,000 award. Would you walk away with a smile? What else would you walk away with?