Leila Weefur is an artist, writer, and curator based in Oakland, CA. Through film and architecture, they examine the performative elements connected to systems of belonging, present in Black, queer, gender-variant embodiment. Their research, across disciplines, explores Black colloquial language, Transnational Blackness, and practices of collectivity.
Weefur’s writing has been published in SEEN, Sming Sming Books, Baest Journal, and other publications. She has worked with local and national institutions including BlackStar Productions, Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, CCA’s Wattis Institute, McEvoy Foundation, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Museum of the African Diaspora, and more. They are a member of the curatorial film collective, The Black Aesthetic.
While at MacDowell, Weefur worked on their upcoming exhibition, “The Chapel of Becoming,” which explores the concept of Trans*Architecture by envisioning a non-denominational chapel designed for a Queer and Transgender congregation, using the principles of unbuilding gender as both a spiritual and architectural practice. This iteration of “The Chapel of Becoming” will be a demonstration of unbuilding, which starts during the simultaneous deconstruction of The Lab in summer 2025. To construct The Chapel, they are working with the building’s site in San Francisco as well as with Michelle Chang, the architect overseeing the space’s unbuilding. She is collaborating closely with Chang, to merge ideas about how to create sanctuary in the removal of material through her experience as a professional architect and Weefur’s conceptual approach to unbuilding as a metaphor for the trans experience. Weefur was offered a residency at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts to begin constructing different parts of The Chapel of Becoming.
