2025-2026 Penn Fine Arts Visiting Artist Lecture Series: Leilah Weinraub

Join director and artist Leilah Weinraub for a lecture on her multidisciplinary practice which often extends across film, performance and installation.

The Weitzman Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania and the Institute of Contemporary Art are pleased to present an artist lecture and presentation with Leilah Weinraub whose work organizes power, identity, labor and desire through genre-merging strategies that move between fiction and reality. Weinraub combines film noir, documentary, comedy and performance in works that extend from screens to stages and public space.

This free public lecture is part of a series that gathers distinguished artists, activists, writers, and disruptors whose work engages with the social and cultural themes of our time.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Leilah Weinraub was born in 1979 in Los Angeles. An artist, film director, and performer, Weinraub is best known for the underground documentary Shakedown (2018). Her latest film, Seek No Favor (2025), codirected with Elle Clay, premieres at the BlackStar Film Festival. Weinraub recently held a residency at New Theater Hollywood, where her performance work evolved in dialogue with her cinematic practice. Recent solo presentations include Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York (2018) and What Pipeline, Detroit (2018). Group exhibitions include the 35th Bienal de São Paulo (2023); Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2021); Kunsthall Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway (2021); Performa, New York (2021); Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2019); Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York (2018); and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017). Weinraub studied at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH, and the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.

Beyond filmmaking, Weinraub was a co-founder and CEO of Hood By Air, where she directed the brand’s creative and strategic identity, runway shows, films, and global presentations—shaping HBA’s emergence as a defining cultural phenomenon of the 2010s.