leon clowes (he/they) is an older disabled white working-class queer transdisciplinary artist navigating lived grief and loss in self-compassionate ways. Their first remerging work (‘Nan Kids’ at SPILL, Deptford X and Wandsworth arts festivals, 2021-22) was featured on BBC1 news and resulted in a BBC Sounds podcast, foregrounding the hidden his/her-stories of people raised in kinship care. Over the last three years, leon’s transdisciplinary artworks have featured in, and been commissioned by, Frieze Art Fair, Cafe Oto, WORM Rotterdam, Queer Art Projects, Disability Arts Online, Margate Pride, Queer Contemporaries, Datscha Radio Berlin, Britten Pears Arts and Exploding Cinema.

leon is also a scholarship-supported PhD student at London College of Music conducting research into his self-compassionate autoethnographic trauma-inspired performance practice. Together with their supervisor Dr Cathy Sloan, and working curatorially with international groups and artists, leon is using lived experience to help establish the national Addiction Recovery Arts Network.