Addison Leon hates the third person narrative that comes standard with a classic artist statement so I’m not going to abide by that. I’m a BioArtist and sculptor from Richmond, VA, based in Chicago, IL, with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Situating my practice within BioArts and sculpture, I use my body and frame it as the basis for all of my work.

I focus a majority of my work around my non-binary identity and concepts of queer “passing”. Throughout my work, I flip the script to allow space for gender variance to be assumed. I hope to disrupt the gender binary. I don’t hope to work within the gender binary or to dance around its edges but rather to permanently fracture it. I want to watch my gender variant community render it unrecognizable with our big queer split. This town isn’t big enough for the both of us.

The physical manifestations of my work fluctuates, crossing into mediums like botany, fibers, and book making with all roads leading back to gender.

When I’m not working on cohabitation within my body or on specific adornments to best express my identity, I’m working with locally sourced or found woods as a labor of love.