Joce Leo, EMERGE AIR in Print '26
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Interview with Katie Bonadies, September 2026
Content warning: this profile includes material that may be distressing for some audiences. It includes references to sexual violence, chronic illness, and psychiatric incarceration.
Joce Leo (Finding Affinities Press) was the recent EMERGE Artist in Residence in Print ‘26. Text is Leo’s primary medium, which is rooted in a regular writing practice that’s fundamental to their visual art. Leo layers their cyanotypes, prints, and photography with text to bring deeper meaning to their work. I had the opportunity to read some of Leo’s hybrid poetry and memoir and found it visceral and vulnerable in a way that insists the viewer linger a little longer.
Writing was Leo’s entrypoint into visual art. They started writing poetry around age five or six to make sense of their internal experience, “I would find words that were exactly what I was looking for and would hyperfixate.” Her writing later moved more toward essay and memoir, which is where she finds herself now. Leo majored in psychology and added a second major in visual arts after taking a couple of studio classes. It was difficult for them to engage with visual media at first; when they took a sculpture course they realized they were writing more than making. That changed when Leo found cyanotype, which became an important part of her practice. The color of cyanotype has a clinical feeling that aligns with the content Leo creates. She later went on to complete an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Maine College of Art & Design in 2025.
Cyanotype prints by Joce Leo.
Leo finds the cyanotype process magical and the space for error beautiful. They use a negative of a photo or text, which they then invert. Then, they coat a sheet of paper in a chemical solution and expose it to UV light or sunlight. Leo used the studios’ oversized exposure unit to make their prints, which is an important piece of equipment that they lost access to after graduation. Using the sun is much harder when working with a large piece of paper because it is more difficult to get an even coat of the solution and uniform exposure. It often results in little drips or singes from UV light. Their goal during the residency was to work on some large cyanotypes and refine their process. Leo is leaning into the ‘mistakes’. “There’s been a lot of trial and error, and that’s something I want to continue to do.” They’ve used a lot of different papers and found cold pressed watercolor paper works best for them.
Leo had a lot of fear she would stop making art when she left her MFA program. She is actively learning to follow her own compass and disregard the echo of feedback from graduate school. One of the critiques of their work by a male professor was that representing personal experience in student work lacked value. In response, Leo has leaned into craft, “My experience is what makes my aesthetic, not the other way around. And there’s room for all personal experience–everyone’s story deserves to be told.” Leo would rather make bad art than none at all.
The silver lining of her MFA experience was that her thesis allowed her to research and understand why she writes about these topics and who started that legacy. Leo’s thematics surround sexual violence, survivorship, and the systems designed to oppress women. They examine how these topics intersect with chronic illness and psychiatric incarceration. “Long term psych holds were used against women who spoke up about abuse histories, which was part of my experience as a teenager. It feeds the idea of hysteria….” – another part of Leo’s research – “...Labeling and pathologizing is what our system does best.” Writing about life experiences can be retraumatizing and it’s important to have support systems in place.
One of the biggest references Leo called on in her thesis was Body Work, a craft book about the healing power of writing memoir by Melissa Febos. Febos is one of our most prominent contemporary writers known for incisive cultural criticism regarding gender and sexuality. The book became the groundwork around which Leo built their thesis, arguing that memoir is protest. She also references the art of Audrey Woolen, an artist who has a series of selfies on hospital beds, “It’s so accessible the way that she makes and it’s a powerful statement to say, ‘I’m here. I’m at the doctor’s office and this is the art.’”
Integrating art and psychology was an important step in Leo’s academic and personal development. Now Leo works full time in mental health doing frontline work with unhoused folks and people with severe mental health issues like substance abuse disorders and clinically diagnosed mental disorders. Leo is still determining how to make space for their practice as a postgraduate. They continued to get into the studio throughout the EMERGE program and continued to write constantly, “I really love being in the studio, and if I’m not around other artists I think I lose that [momentum].” Leo is currently in a master's program for counseling, and they are considering pursuing social work.
Text has become a way of protest for Leo. They’re looking a lot at the aesthetics of protest posters and that’s the direction their work is slowly moving towards. “I have no choice but to make the work for myself and also for other people.” Rage fuels their art. “Working in social work, there’s plenty to feel rage towards. There are so many people let down by so many systems.” For Leo, activism is the practice secondary to art.
Leo also makes sure to take a break from the heavy material that’s usually at the center of their work. During the EMERGE Program Leo intentionally made space to create work that’s fun, aesthetic, and weird. The program has given them a pressureless experience to get back into making art and the space to do all they want to without someone overseeing the parameters of the experience. “I’m really proud of the memoir I wrote. Maybe less proud of the physical work that I made but I wrote a book of essays.” The collection is titled 16 Documentations of Touch about Leo’s relationship to physical touch and the ways their body has been touched in positive and negative ways throughout their life. Their goal is to start transferring the memoirs to posters made from cyanotype or screen printing. Leo looks forward to working that through when they continue as a regular print member in September.
If you have a story to tell, tell it; that’s what Joce Leo’s work is about. “It’s better that it’s there than not there at all.” Leo’s poem, “Pretty For a Dyke” is published with Sick Girl Strategies, a DIY downloadable ‘mutant’ book by Nadja Kracunovic. Contact Joce Leo through Instagram @findingaffinitiespress for details.
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