“(King’s music) has elements of a guiding spiritual that floats in the air to give congregants the strength and, yes, the spirit to move forward.”
Leah King is a multimedia artist and DJ who works with collage, sound, film, and performance. In an ongoing exploration of presence, her work leans into repetition as a form of stability. A techno music composer with a background in nightlife studies, she creates abstracted works about family with repeated sonic and visual components that celebrate Black bodies in motion. By reworking archival materials, interviews, field recordings, and found objects, King shifts and reframes painful or obscured family histories. Loops become anchors for reverence, joy, and recovery.
The materials in King’s visual practice are almost exclusively recycled, including old photos, shredded fabric, magazine cutouts, glitter, lace, and items found in her family members’ closets. As a musician who has scored films and performed globally, King incorporates audio into her installations through sonic layering that centers archival sounds and is inspired by house music, experimental jazz, and gospel - often described as audio collage.
Building on her career in music, King began a visual art practice in late 2020 and has since exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Charlie James Gallery, Root Division Gallery, Sovern Gallery, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, where she was the inaugural artist-in-residence. Her work has been supported by Brooklyn Arts Council, Berlin Music Board, Museum of the African Diaspora, Headlands Center for the Arts, Puffin Foundation, and Los Angeles Center for Photography. She has taught at San Francisco State University, Women’s Audio Mission, and California College of the Arts. In January 2025, she presented her research at the Dancecult Conference at Technische Universität Berlin, supported by a Center for Cultural Innovation grant.
King received her MFA from USC Roski School of Art and Design, where she completed a thesis on the healing modalities of house music and Black futurity, and a BA from Barnard College/Columbia University, where she studied Black diasporic music and dance. She is based between Brooklyn and Los Angeles.