Leonardo Gabriel do Amaral

SAIC SHOWS 2026 GRADUATE EXHIBITIONS

Graduates

SAIC SHOWS 2026 GRADUATE EXHIBITIONS

Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Photography

Leonardo Gabriel do Amaral (b. 2001) is an artist and writer from São Paulo, Brazil. Raised bilingually during the age of information, he developed a parasocial relationship with the United States through film, television, and the internet, becoming a cultural nomad, inhabiting the space between languages, geographies, and identities. Working across photography, installation, sculpture, video, and writing, his projects explore immigration, imperialism, love, and longing, weaving together research, parody, and archive. Leonardo holds a BFA in Film, Photography, and Visual Arts from Ithaca College and is an MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been displayed in group and solo exhibitions in Chicago, Miami, and Ithaca, and featured in publications such as Stone Canoe and BOM Magazine.

Leonardo Gabriel do Amaral - Almost (T)here

Almost (T)here, 2025, Luster Photographic Prints, OCE prints, thumbtacks, blue artist tape, grey/green suitcase, emergency exit sign, plastic ball, blanket, magnetic pins, 216 x 108 in., photo by Leonardo Amaral

Housefire, 2025, 2025 Grey/Green Suitcase, 13-inch MacBook Pro Space Grey, YouTube Fireplace ASMR, 16x38x11 in., photo by Leonardo Amaral

Leonardo Gabriel do Amaral - Eight to Eighteen

Eight to Eighteen, 2025, Luster Photographic Print, 3 Programmable LED Panels, 35.5x25.5 in., photo by Leonardo Amaral

Leonardo Gabriel do Amaral - Window Seat

Window Seat, 2026, Blue Sky camera tripod, security camera shell, LATAM model airplane, airplane window wall vinyl, 23x72x23 in., photo by Leonardo Amaral

Leonardo Gabriel do Amaral - Untitled (Not another lightbox!)

Untitled (Not another lightbox!), 2026, iridescent light fixture, luster photographic prints, blue tape, 48 x 5.3 x 1.7 in., photo by Leonardo Amaral

“What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding?” – David Foster Wallace
I was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, but never really felt like it. I was raised in English, for no reason other than it might give me a leg up in an ever-Americanized job landscape. Raised on movies and cartoons that stitched my vocal cords into a generic American accent. Raised on the internet, learning how to float over an ocean of information, people, and cultures. Never calling anywhere home, never committing to a self, never having to.
Working across photography, installation, sculpture, video, and writing, I explore immigration as an ongoing condition. My projects emerge in response to one another, each forming the next step within a lived sequence of encounters, contradictions, and failures. I am interested in the physical and metaphysical ruptures caused by imperialism and immigration, and attempts at mending said ruptures.
The work lives in the in-between. It does not seek to resolve immigration, imperialism, globalization, longing, mediation, love. The work arises from attachments that precede choice: to places, languages, people, images, systems that claimed me before I claimed them. In inhabiting these contradictions, I make visible the soft violences, the quiet seductions, the fractures where longing pulsates.

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