sunnyleeras@gmail.com
Bio:
Sunny Leerasanthanah
b. Bangkok, Thailand
Lives in Brooklyn, New York, USA
Sunny Leerasanthanah (she/ they) was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand, and currently lives and works in New York City. Her visual art practice spans video, photography, multimedia installation, book arts, and performance, ruminating on storytelling, placemaking, identity, family, superstition, and collecting.
Their first solo institutional show, “Naturalization” at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (WI) ran from July 29, 2023 through January 28, 2024. Upcoming, they are exhibiting a new body of work in their first major New York solo show at Smack Mellon.
Sunny is an upcoming artist-in-residence at Artists Alliance Inc.’s LES Studio Program. They were most recently a recipient of the 2023 Center for Book Arts' Book Artist-in-Residence. They have also been a recipient of the 2023 Image Text Workshop Residency, the 2022 Fire Island Artist Residency, the 2021 Queens Council on the Arts' 2021 New Work Grant, 2018 Rehearsal Residency, and 2015 James B. Pendleton Grant at Ithaca College.
They have exhibited at SculptureCenter (NY), Lubov (Projects) (NY), Local Project Art Space (NY), and Handwerker Gallery (NY), amongst other spaces. Their book Mom’s Magnets (2020) is in the collection of Asia Art Archive in America (NY) and Fathom Library (RI). They have spoken in panel discussions including at Candice Madey Gallery (NY), Soho Photo Gallery (NY), Queer | Art (virtual), and Asian American Arts Alliance (virtual).
In their commission photography work, they have published 40+ portraits of American artists and art world figures in the book We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World by Jasmin Hernandez (2021). They have captured and continue to photograph portraits of curators, art workers, and artists.
Sunny received a Master of Arts from Teachers College at Columbia University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ithaca College. Beyond their visual art practice and photography, they work at The Curve Foundation.
“Naturalization” solo exhibition by Sunny Leerasanthanah at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Curated by Tanya Gayer
July 29, 2023 – January 28, 2024
︎ Link to JMKAC website
Installation Images
Artwork Details
“Certain Aliens” (2023)
HD video, color, sound; duration 42 min
Cast: Hugo Gallo, x senn-yuen rance, Cherrie Yu
Directing: Sunny Leerasanthanah
Video and Sound Editing: Sunny Leerasanthanah
Videography: Sorn Bunnag
Set Design: Sophie Porter-Hyatt
Sound: Cy Kim
Lighting: Lindsay Vanderpool
Production Assistants: Josephine Heston and Lucas Reif
Movers: Joel Trejos and Thomas Truong
Captions and Titles: Sunny Leerasanthanah
Additional Sound and Foley: Chosic, Josephine Heston, Sunny Leerasanthanah
Props and Furniture: Materials for the Arts and Remix Market NYC
Commissoned by John Michael Kohler Arts Center
"Naturalization" (2023) by Sunny Leerasanthanah
HD video, color, sound; duration 14 min
Video and Video Editing: Sunny Leerasanthanah
Sound and Sound Editing: Cy Kim
Sound Credits:
Field recordings by Sunny Leerasanthanah
Studio recordings by Cy Kim and Sunny Leerasanthanah
Additional audio by the National Park Service Sound Library
Texts sourced from government and news media sources.
Comissioned by John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Partially produced while in residence at Fire Island Artist Residency 2022
Work in progress (2023)
Binding Qing Ming joss paper sourced from Bangkok, Thailand.
Wuthichai (Exit Interview)
2021
Two-channel HD video installation with mixed media including watch, journals, video camcorder and tape, medicine bag, pills, pill splitter, incentive spirometer, wallet, ID cards, glasses and case, shoes, shirts, pants, shorts, hangers. Dimensions variable.
Video portion is 48 min on loop.
Commissioned by SculptureCenter; exhibited at SculptureCenter’s 2021 In Practice show, You may go, but this will bring you back (March-August 2021)
Awarded the 2021 Queens Council on the Arts’ New Work Grant.
INSTALLATION EXCERPT: vimeo.com/535311796
EXHIBITION CATALOG: Link
EXHIBITION PRESS RELEASE: Link
Description: Thai-speaking actors, who were casted via online community forums for Thai immigrants in New York City, role-play and improvise dialogue as Sunny’s deceased father.
Above: Video installation images
Towards Tenderness
2017
Exhibition of prints and text
Description: A two-person exhibition that took place at Lubov gallery and was organized and displayed works by Sunny Leerasanthanah and David Lurvey.
Above: Pamphlet design by Stephen Lurvey
Above: Install shots by David Lurvey
Above: My Mother Doesn’t Know I Think Her Softness Is Her Strength
Print by Sunny Leerasanthanah
We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World (2021) by Jasmin Hernandez; Published by Abrams Books
Principal Photography (45+ artist portraits, and studio and art work photography) by Sunny Leerasanthanah
Purchase at Abrams Books ︎
Mom’s Magnets
Mom’s Magnets
2020
Self-published risograph book
5.85 x 8.25 in
Printed by Witti Studio, Bangkok, Thailand
Featured at Bangkok Art Book Fair 2020
Edition of 100
︎︎~ LAST FEW COPIES AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE !~
email sunnyleeras@gmail.com
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2020
Self-published risograph book
5.85 x 8.25 in
Printed by Witti Studio, Bangkok, Thailand
Featured at Bangkok Art Book Fair 2020
Edition of 100
︎︎~ LAST FEW COPIES AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE !~
email sunnyleeras@gmail.com
Photo courtesy Miriam Gallery
PURCHASE IN USA
︎︎︎ Printed Matter online + Chelsea location ︎
︎︎︎ Miriam Gallery online + gallery ︎
︎︎︎ Citizen Editions online ︎
PURCHASE IN THAILAND
︎︎︎ Happening Shop online + Bangkok Arts and Culture Center location + Dadfa La Salle location ︎
Description: Mom’s Magnets is Leerasanthanah’s typological documentation of her mother’s collection of magnets from worldly destinations. The souvenir magnet is exemplary of reducing culture, place, people, heritage, and politics to commodified kitsch. Patterns reveal the homogenous representations of marketable icons. Playful juxtapositions force a relationship between two seemingly unrelated symbols, like the Egyptian hieroglyph tablet and Britain’s telephone booth. Ultimately, the book contemplates the attempt to embody and possess place and time—a subject that resonates with Leerasanthanah’s past work.
PHOTOBOOK
Homes Against Tides
2018
Self-published photobook
Saddle-stitched, color laser print on matte paper
8.25 x 10.75 in
Edition of 10
Description: The photobook features a series of images taken in the south of Thailand, studying the delicate patterns produced by Indo-Pacific sand bubbler crabs as they dig for food and discard sand in mesmerizing patterns. The book dwells on the persistent, Sisyphean cycle of the crabs, whose evidence of a day’s work is washed away at high tide daily.
WRITING
An Interview with Artist Gwen Shockey for Hyperallergic (2019)
︎ Link to article
VIDEO INSTALLATIONS & FILM
This is as far as I can take you
2023
(Description coming soon)
Certain Aliens
2023
(Description coming soon)
Currently exhibiting at John Michael Kohler Arts Center
July 29, 2023 - Feb 18, 2024
︎ Exhibition text
42 min, HD color video
Cast: Hugo Gallo, x senn-yuen rance, Cherrie Yu
Directing: Sunny Leerasanthanah
Video and Sound Editing: Sunny Leerasanthanah
Videography: Sorn Bunnag
Set Design: Sophie Porter-Hyatt Sound:
Cy Kim Lighting: Lindsay Vanderpool
Production Assistants: Josephine Heston and Lucas Reif
Movers: Joel Trejos and Thomas Truong
Commissioned by John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Naturalization
2022-2023
(Description coming soon)
Currently exhibiting at John Michael Kohler Arts Center
July 29, 2023 - Feb 18, 2024
︎ Exhibition text
14 min HD color video
Video: Sunny Leerasanthanah
Sound: Cy Kim
Commissioned by John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Wuthichai (Exit Interview)
2021
48 min Two-channel HD video installation with mixed media including watch, journals, video camcorder and tape, medicine bag, pills, pill splitter, incentive spirometer, wallet, ID cards, glasses and case, shoes, shirts, pants, shorts, hangers. Dimensions variable.
Commissioned by SculptureCenter; exhibited at SculptureCenter’s 2021 In Practice show, You may go, but this will bring you back.
Awarded the 2021 Queens Council on the Arts’ New Work Grant.
INSTALLATION EXCERPT: vimeo.com/535311796
SCULPTURECENTER EXHIBITION CATALOG: Link to PDF
Description: Thai-speaking actors, who were casted via online community forums for Thai immigrants in New York City, role-play and improvise dialogue as Sunny’s deceased father.
Strange Fear & Ecstasy
2016
Video installation, 5:22 min on loop
Footage credit: Cellphone video clips of drag performer Aaron Thornton (Vanilla Diamond) at Virginia Beach in 2015;
Archival footage by filmmaker Nelson Sullivan (1948-1989).
INSTALLATION PREVIEW: vimeo.com/225476297
Surface Tension
2015Video installation on loop
INSTALLATION PREVIEW: vimeo.com/154914664
183 Dreams
2013
Short film, 3:32 min, 16mm black and white film
Ladybird
2013
Short film, 4 min, HD video
Co-Written and Co-Directed by Sunny Leerasanthanah and Sydney Kovar. Originally screened at Ithaca College, New York
FAMILY ARCHIVE
Images from the 1970s from my aunt’s collection
At the end of the school year, my aunt and her friends gave each other professional headshots for safekeeping.
BANGKOK 2019 – 2020
CAMBODIA 2019 – 2020
NEW YORK in Black & White
Ithaca, Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan
