Leila Weefur
Between Beauty & Horror

ISBN 978-0-9985006-6-9
March 2019, English, 4.25 x 5 in, 64 pages + bookmark, color, softcover
Edition of 250
Design: Sming Sming Books

Leila Weefur's Between Beauty & Horror is an extension of Weefur's video installation of the same name exploring the symbiotic nature of beauty and horror. The film’s poetic narrative explores this particular duality as an intrinsic part of the Black experience. It posits abjection, violence, and eroticism as the ingredients that make up the “between” and are considered to be the binding agents of Beauty & Horror. The book features essays by Leila Weefur & Elena Gross.

Leila Weefur (She/They/He) is an artist, writer, and curator who lives and works in Oakland, CA. She received her MFA from Mills College. Weefur tackles the complexities of phenomenological Blackness through video, installation, printmaking, and lecture-performances. Using materials and visual gestures to access the tactile memory, she explores the abject, the sensual and the nuances found in the social interactions and language with which our bodies have to negotiate space. Weefur is a recipient of the Hung Liu award, the Murphy & Cadogan award, and the Walter & Elise Haas Creative Work Fund. Weefur has worked with local and national institutions including SFMOMA, Southern Exposure, The Wattis, and Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, New York. She is the Audio/Video, Editor In Chief at Art Practical and a member of The Black Aesthetic.