Helio Leon

Born Madrid, 1987, I'm a photographer and filmmaker based in Dublin. Active since the 2000s, I have produced several photographic documentary series including: Samothrace (2008), Warwick Road (2009), Marfa Sky (2020), scheduled to become a photobook by TLP Editions this year; and The Purple Room (Barcelona, Istanbul, and Madrid, 2008/2020), soon to be published as a photobook, by Taiwanese publisher Meta-Cosmology. The Purple Room was exhibited in the group shows “A Vague Anxiety” at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (2019), and “Pulse” at Noorderlicht Festival (2015), among other institutions, and as a solo show installation in MarfaOpen, Texas (2019).

I've produced several films like The Aroma of the Ashes (2010), Last Time (Cork 2015), Night Journey (2019) and The Purple Room (2008/2021), which has been screened internationally (Ireland, USA, France, Greece, Japan...). 

I've been the recipient of the Krakow Photomonth ShowOff Prize (2015), the Arts Council Agility Award (2021 and 2022), and the Arts Council Film Project Award (2022).

Education: 2011 BFA, Facultad de Bellas Artes de Cuenca, Cuenca, Spain.   

Exhibitions: Pallas Projects, Karavansarai, Collaboration with Art Nomads collective, Dublin, September 2022. IMMA, A Vague Anxiety, Group Show, Dublin, 2019. MarfaOpen festival, The Purple Room, Solo Show, Marfa, Texas, 2018.

Project Title: The Purple Room

The Purple Room is a diaristic series of documentary photographs that spans more than a decade (2008/2020). Divided into four chapters. The work encompasses life in Madrid and Huelva; the post-porn, queer, party and squat scene in Barcelona; wanderings and encounters in Istanbul's underground; and back in Madrid, in juxtaposition with the Irish landscape. 

My work is rooted in the tradition of personal documentary photography, and works that explore the existential and the emotional. I strongly believe in the necessity of direct experience in order to create, in an art rooted in life itself, a space where personal subjectivity, imagination, and reality entangle.

 I want to talk about the entangled feelings that relate present and past in every situation, to preserve a particular side of their emotional light and shadows in the only way I know, which is through still and moving images.

The work will soon be released as a photo book by Tawanese publisher, Meta-Cosmology.

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