Biography

Howard Leu is an interdisciplinary artist based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He uses both digital and darkroom photographic processes, as well as photo archives, to frame narratives of the Asian diaspora, including his own family’s immigrant journey. His recent exhibitions include the 2025 Midwest Regional Juried Exhibition at Art Link in Fort Wayne, IN; Artservancy Artist-in-Residence show at Gallery 224, and solo exhibition, Sacred Reverie, at Kenilworth East Gallery in Milwaukee, WI. Leu is an instructor of record and an MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, expected to graduate in May 2025.

The swashbuckling young man in front of the Mustang wanted to show his family back home that he was doing well. I have about a dozen photos of my father from this time when he was in the US without his family. Just like most photographs don’t tell the real story, these leave out a lot. But the purpose of them are clear: the images were made out of care, to ease the family’s concern, and to distract them with attractive photos of him. I also came to realize that I fear losing memories of my father. I know there’s things of him that I have already forgot, just don’t know what they were. I took up the ritual of printing that photo of him over and over again in gum bichromate. I started printing him in CMYK color separation to get a “true to life” color image but soon became fascinated with the imperfect quality of the process. I thought about rituals of honoring ancestors, the Chinese ancient ancestors worship rituals. In most homes in the Chinese diaspora, families keep an altar to worship Buddhist and Taoist deities and ancestors. Each morning and evening, the head of the family lights three incense sticks, holds them together with both hands, and bows from the hips three times to the altar. The incense sticks are magenta coated with muted gold sandalwood powder. In my piece Mustang Tony, I adopted those colors, the repetition, and the performance to honor my father and the man in that photo. Each of the seventy-two 4”x5” gum bichromate prints are one-of-a-kind. It’s also a reflection of my relent in trying to gather all my fragments of him and try to keep those memories whole. It’s imperfect and it’s enough.

In the process of making work about my deceased father and having conversations with photographs of him, I began to reflect on the photos of my mother that I have held close to me. One photo that I have kept on my fridge in every apartment I’ve lived in shows a young, beautiful woman in a cozy light color sweater with a pleasant smile. I told people that this was my mom, even as she aged and moved through various stages of her life, even now in her mid 70s. Just like how I didn’t know the man posing with the Mustang, I didn’t know this woman in the photo on my fridge. 

In recent years, my mother, who like a lot of immigrant parents never share stories about hardship, began to open up to tell me stories of her past. She told me about this woman in the photo who followed her adventurous husband across the world to make a home in a foreign country. This woman suffered silently while feeling more and more isolated as her husband and children are  adjusting to the new world. I began to make work about this woman. In my piece titled Bodhi Roots, I imagined the conditions that society often put women and mothers in--they are venerated and revered but they are also confined by such virtues and structures in which those honors are given. I weaved a nest or beehive-like containment with rattan, into metal grates of an old ironing board to house this photograph. 

The woman in the photo is overcast by shadows of the viewer standing close to it. It’s not until the viewer steps back or lowers themselves that the woman’s face is visible in the light. The weaved form is painted in gold on the outside. The interweaving on the back of the it is chaotic but the front is balanced. A braid of red and gold thread falls out of the bottom on the weaved form and barely touches a clump of charred wood. The char is evidence of fire, of burning. We often see the fire while forgetting what fuels the flame; we pay reverence to the flames but then it’s gone, the memory of it remains in the char and ash. Those are the elements that continues to contribute to life beyond the fire. 

I am saddened by how much I don’t know about that women in the photo and how much I don’t really know about my mother. At the same time, she is alive and willing to tell me stories about her life, and I want to hear anything that she’s willing to share with me.