Leigh has described her work as auto- ethnographic , and her interests include African art and vernacular objects, performance, and feminism. Simone Leigh was born in in Chicago, Illinois , to Jamaican immigrants who came to the United States as missionaries for the Church of the Nazarene.
Her neighborhood had become segregated by white flight beginning in the s; nonetheless, she viewed the South Side of Chicago as a wonderful place for a black person to grow up. It was very good for my self-esteem. I still feel lucky that I grew up in that crucible. Although her parents wanted her to go to a stricter religious school and live at home, Leigh chose Earlham College , associated with the Quakers , in Richmond, Indiana. She then became estranged from her parents and worked to put herself through college.
After graduating in , Leigh planned to become a social worker. After an internship at the National Museum of African Art and stint at a studio near Charlottesville, Virginia , she embraced art as a career. As a young mother, she worked intently to get showings and galleries interested in her ceramics work but it was not until that she began to call herself an artist.
Leigh combines her training in American ceramics with an interest in African pottery, using African motifs which tend to have modernist characteristics. Though she considers herself to be primarily a sculptor, she recently has been involved in social sculpture, or social practice work that engages the public directly. Her showing of works known as a presentation was entitled "Sovereignty". She was also awarded the Golden Lion for her work Brick House in the general exhibition.
As an homage to this history, Leigh created a walk-in health center with yoga, nutrition and massage sessions, staffed by volunteers in 19th-century nurse uniforms.
