After learning about Leonard’s past, his work starts to become a little clearer: he had lost his entire sense of belonging. Fast forward a few years, and he began making work for his project False Idol. First commencing in 2016, the ongoing project arose as he moved to America and married his husband six months after gay marriage was federally legalised. “When I started the project, it was really just about figuring out what life is in America as a visual artist,” he tells us. At the time, Leonard had just finished studying and, while applying for his green card, unfortunately, he was terminated from his teaching job simply because his permit had arrived two weeks too late. “Honestly, when that happened, it was just very stressful – I just thought, ‘fuck, what am I going to do?’” It was required that he document his income, his work, his relationship with Peter, and his family in order for his green card approval; Leonard was soon under the microscopic lens of the government.
“In the last two years, I can now see how it really demoralised me and took a toll on my body,” he says. “And, looking back, I felt like that was the necessary suffering that I had to go through to ask all of these questions about my value as a human and as an artist.” This notion is ubiquitously present in False Idol, a project that Leonard used – and still uses – as a catalyst for examining these roles. There was even a moment where he had taken a DNA test, simply to understand this “unresolved relationship” that was growing between himself and America. “I expected to look at the data and it would tell me that I’m 99 per cent from mainland China,” Leonard adds, before learning that he was actually part native Indonesian. “It was always instilled in me that I was different from everybody else – that was attacking me. But knowing that I am not pure Chinese was really quite unsettling, as they were trying to get rid of me. It made me question what it means to be socially superior, and what it means to discriminate based on the physical layer of an identity.”
This, in turn, formed the basis of False Idol – “a response to the time,” he explains, while also referencing the climate that was prevailing in the country – the rise of Trump, the women’s march and the appointment of the supreme court justice, for example. Most prevalent though, is the fact that False Idol is a reflection of how he’s had to deal with the past, as well as the difficult moments in his life that arose later on – such as dealing with depression, an eating disorder, body dysmorphia and his mother falling sick. “But I recognise the unnecessary suffering that I needed to go through to ask these questions about the meaning of life.”
“Long story short,” he continues, “the day before my show opened in Pittsburgh [at Silver Eye Centre for Photography in October last year], I got the notification that my green card was approved.” A moment of relief prevailed, as did an uncontrollable feeling of worry. “At that time, my mum was recovering from her surgery, and I – with my partner Peter – had accomplished the thing that I had set out to do in my life,” he says, “I’m now going to stay in America.”
With this awareness came the conclusion of False Idol, that which denotes a survey of immigration, social superiority and inferiority, trauma, relationships, family, trust and community. A mammoth project to say the least, it has now become a marker of his life. Each image is meticulously staged, cinematic and colourfully outlandish – an aesthetic that, to no surprise, evolved from a previous education in theatre. Tried and tested when he initially moved to California, Leonard discovered his love for the camera during the third year of his undergraduate studies: “When I took my first photography class, that’s when I realised how fucking awesome it felt. I could hide in the darkroom by myself and work on my stories,” he says, “and I don’t have to rely on actors or crews to carry out a project.”
Leonard was then accepted into graduate school at the Art Institute of Chicago, and in the winter breaks, he would travel back to Indonesia to visit his family. “At that time, in 2014, I went back to Indonesia and my grandfather passed away,” he recalls, which ultimately garnered him the courage to tell his mother that he was queer, something he’d shied away from for years because of his fear of rejection. “Leading up to that moment, I was making photographs with my family, with the thought that I could potentially not ever see them again – I didn’t know if they were going to accept me. I really relied on my camera.” This explains a lot about Leonard’s choice in a subject, many of whom are his family posing charismatically and absurdly within each frame.