Faculty

Leigh Davis is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the intersection of culture, community, and place. Her work explores grief, memory, and storytelling – how these universal experiences help define what it means to be human. Davis’s work is highly site-specific; she is drawn to contexts that present their own spirituality, using this intrinsic human quality to complement the stories she tells through her installations. Trained as a photographer, her work now ranges across media, from sculpture and installation to sound, performance, and video. In recent years, Davis has been producing a body of work about end-of-life experiences (ELEs)—in particular, how they help us understand the emotional intricacy of grief and the ways in which we construct our beliefs about human consciousness and a possible afterlife. Her recent film project, Inquiry into the ELE (2016-2019), was exhibited at Vox Populi (Philadelphia) in April 2020. Her site-based audio installation, Vigil, featured at Green-Wood Cemetery (Brooklyn) in September 2020.

Davis has shown work at Open Source Gallery (Brooklyn), BRIC (Brooklyn), EFA Project Space (New York), Oliver Art Center at CCA (Oakland), and MICA (Baltimore). She has created performances and/or events for the former Morbid Anatomy Museum, Dixon Place and Hunter East Harlem Gallery (New York). In 2021, Davis was selected to be a part of the first Public Interest Design Lab fellowship in-collaboration with the DC Public Library and the Goethe-Institute, to begin the process of building a public archive and art project about the Rosedale neighborhood in Northeast DC. Davis is the recipient of numerous grants, including from The Pollination Project and the New York Department of Cultural Affairs. A native of Pittsburgh, she works between DC and NYC, where she is currently a Part-Time Assistant Professor at Parsons the New School for Design.