Leah Dixon

Leah Dixon is an artist working in sculpture, performance, and social architectural interventions. She lives and works in New York City and Berlin. She received her BFA from Ohio State University, her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, and was a resident at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has shown widely nationally and internationally, including recent shows at Ludlow 38 MINI / Goethe Institut in New York, Edel Assanti Gallery in London, SORT Gallery in Vienna, the Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, CA and the Nicaraguan Biennial of Contemporary Art. She is a current nominee for the 2018 United States Artists Fellowship.

Leah Dixon’s Lovers in a Dangerous Time-Rocket Rug is a multimedia piece that expands upon a series of yoga mat war rugs that Dixon has been constructing since 2010. They are based on her research of a group of rug weavers from Afghanistan that fled to Kashmir during the Soviet invasion in the late 1970s, who utilized pictographs of war scenes and military technology that they experienced in their homeland into the patterns. Due to the Muslim refugees' displacement in Kashmir, there was a growing influence of the Hindu culture and the practice of an ancient form of yoga, Shaivism. Refugees began using their own war rugs as both prayer rugs and yoga mats. Dixon’s work is a commentary on both the use of yoga as a means of cultural integration for Afghan refugees in Kashmir, and a staple for America's commodified self-care culture. The rug is hung between a functional architecture that consists of two towers – doubling as empty pillars and seating – forcing those seated to face each other.

EXHIBITION:
Through the Art of Painting