BOMB Magazine Award Winner
Leyla Cárdenas (b. 1975, Bogotá, Colombia) received her BA in Fine Arts from Los Andes University and her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her installation, sculpture and mixed-media work considers urban ruins and city landscapes as indications of social transformation, loss and historical memory. Remains, fragments and discarded structures are used as material for her work, employing a strategy that is as much destructive as constructive. She has had solo shows in Los Angeles and San Jose as well as Bogotá, Colombia and Madrid, Spain. In 2017, her work Excisión was part of Home—So Different, So Appealing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Also in 2017, she participated in the California Pacific Triennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana. In 2018, she was part of the Cuenca Biennial in Ecuador. She has participated in other group exhibitions at Apexart and Galería Josée Bienvenu, both NY; Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose; and Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh, NC as well as Banco de la República and Casas Riegner Gallery, both Bogotá; Galería Max Estrella, Madrid; Museo de Arte Moderno, Medellín, Colombia; Maison de l´Amérique Latine, Paris; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Q21 Museums Quartier, Vienna, Austria; and Museo de Arte de Zapopán, México. She is a recipient of the Oma Art Prize and has held residencies at the Q21 Museums Quartier, Vienna and Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands. She was the winner of the 2008 Grand Prize MOLAA Awards from the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach and the 2012 Latin American Roaming Art Award from Asiaciti Trust, Singapore. She was an Associate Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2007. Cárdenas’ work can be found in public and private collections in Europe, South America and the U.S.