Virginia Leonard

My works are representations of my body. It is an ongoing dialogue I have with the realities of the voicelessness of chronic pain and bodily scarring and the daily need to articulate and divine a visual language to process and translate life with scarring and chronic pain. My work holds connotations of revulsion and beauty, it is vital, evolving and honest. I feast upon the process and change, championing the organic reality of my body, its fragility and its involvement in a world of flux. Human physicality isn’t static or closed, the classical ideal is impossible and sterile. More exciting is to understand that I inhabit a ‘body of becoming’. Virginia is represented in New Zealand, Australia, USA and Switzerland. She is held in public collections in New Zealand, Australia and Switzerland. Virginia has won both the Officine Saffi Award in 2021 and The Woollahra Small Sculpture Award in 2025. She is in publications around the world including the Thames and Hudson book 100 Sculptures of Tomorrow. Virginia is exhibiting in the inaugural exhibition , Fondazione Dries Van Noten in Venice April 2026.

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