Leigh Ledare

Leigh Ledare

ROTH

A typewritten note describing the artist's mother air-drying naked on a bed, postshower; a napkin on which his mother has scribbled things she would like to be ("a writer like Marguerite Duras and Anai's Nin" ); a grid of thirty-six photos of his mother playing with her labia; a page from a 1966 Seventeen magazine profile of his mother as a young ballerina; classified ads his mother placed in the Seattle Weekly seeking "a generous wealthy husband (not someone else's) who wants his own private dancer." In all, twenty-three works (images, texts, ephemera) made up "Pretend You're Actually Alive," Leigh Ledare's first New York solo exhibition, which coincided …