Leyla Faye uses painting as a meditation to explore moments of wholeness within hyphenated identity. Inspired by ideas of metamorphosis and shape-shifting, Faye employs mundane and discarded materials, which she transforms into textural landscapes and psychic environments. The figures in her narratives balance explorations of performance and belonging, in an attempt to merge the fictional boundaries of their realities.

Leyla Faye received her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking at the Yale University of Art in New Haven. Recent solo and two person exhibitions include Trema, Karma International, Zürich (2024), A Requiem for Benevolent Beasts, Lindon & Co., London, United Kingdom (2023); Trust Fall, Company Gallery, New York (2023) and group exhibitions at Adler Beatty, New York; Karma International, Zürich; Lyles & King Gallery, New York; and Almine Rech Gallery, Brussels. Her work has been acquired by the public collection of the X Museum in Beijing, China and Muzeum Susch in Zernez, Switzerland. She was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.