#23
2008, 2012, 2014, 2024
The works comprising #23, dating 2008 to the present, hearken back to the artist’s own experience as a football player and coach, and extend to his recent investigations on head trauma that are a consequence of playing the sport. This body of work explores Leonardo’s memories of the rituals of violence embedded in football—utilized to foster team unity as players are forced to not only collectively exert a certain level of aggression, but also suffer the same pain.
There is a fogginess to this memory, however. Leonardo’s own conflicted relationship with the sport being reflected with the two-channel film We Went Undefeated. He asks, why, as young men, would we commit ourselves to a rite of passage that necessitates violence as a means of obtaining a sense of belonging? What continues to draw us back to this concept of ‘team’ and its associations of honor and glory, even when all evidence shows that the punishment quite literally eats away at our ability to think… to be human?
In its totality, the works in #23 ask, therefore, not only what it is that we remember but how, and for what reasons, do we remember?
In retrospect, I look at how these routines act as a rights of passage, and therefore, serve as a metaphor for expectations around masculinity in American society. In the attempt to join the ranks of manhood, young men will “prove” themselves by portraying a front of toughness. Throughout life whether it be athletics, military service, the job force, politics, popular culture, or fatherhood, men will seemingly sacrifice their individuality to fit within a certain mold of masculinity—defining and defending themselves against vulnerability.”
The works comprising #23, dating 2008 to the present, hearken back to the artist’s own experience as a football player and coach, and extend to his recent investigations on head trauma that are a consequence of playing the sport. This body of work explores Leonardo’s memories of the rituals of violence embedded in football—utilized to foster team unity as players are forced to not only collectively exert a certain level of aggression, but also suffer the same pain.
There is a fogginess to this memory, however. Leonardo’s own conflicted relationship with the sport being reflected with the two-channel film We Went Undefeated. He asks, why, as young men, would we commit ourselves to a rite of passage that necessitates violence as a means of obtaining a sense of belonging? What continues to draw us back to this concept of ‘team’ and its associations of honor and glory, even when all evidence shows that the punishment quite literally eats away at our ability to think… to be human?
In its totality, the works in #23 ask, therefore, not only what it is that we remember but how, and for what reasons, do we remember?
In retrospect, I look at how these routines act as a rights of passage, and therefore, serve as a metaphor for expectations around masculinity in American society. In the attempt to join the ranks of manhood, young men will “prove” themselves by portraying a front of toughness. Throughout life whether it be athletics, military service, the job force, politics, popular culture, or fatherhood, men will seemingly sacrifice their individuality to fit within a certain mold of masculinity—defining and defending themselves against vulnerability.”