Simone Leigh is an American contemporary artist. Leigh works in sculpture, video, and installation. Her influences include African art, ethnography and feminism. Her sculptures mix surreal juxtapositions of ceramics with found objects. Her motifs include cowrie shells, roses, plantains, urns, and toilet bowl plungers; these forms, both molded and handcrafted, are often assembled, stacked, or hung in groups. Leigh has exhibited at The Kitchen; Tilton Gallery; Contemporary Art Museum in Houston; SculptureCenter, NY; Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna; L?Appartement22 in Rabbat, Morocco; the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; and the AVA Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2011 she exhibited Breakdown, a video made in collaboration with Liz Magic Laser and opera singer Alicia Hall Moran in "Evidence of Accumulation Artists" at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Her 2012 exhibition at The Kitchen was well received, with positive reviews in Art:21, Artnet.com, and Ebony. [More at Wikipedia]

January 1st, 1968 in Chicago (Age 56)