praxis When Shaun El C. Leonardo is not wearing tights, a mask, and a cape while flying through the air lucha libre style in one of his performances, you'll find him sporting a snazzy suit and patent-leather kicks while wildly wiggling his hips to a searing meringue beat and playing the role of papi chulo to impress the ladies in another show. Leonardo — whose self-assumed middle name stands for "El Conquistador," the artist's macho-flexing alter ego — brings his explorations of Latin machismo to Praxis International Art during his first solo in the Magic City, "Sleeping Giant.
featuring paintings of armor-clad warriors, hulking athletes, and iconic superheroes. The half-Guatemalan, half-Dominican New York artist, who attended an all-boys Jesuit catholic high school in Queens, fuses personal narrative and pop-cultural imagery from his youth with self-portraiture to convey the complexities of his own masculine identity. Leonardo's hyperbolic vision of masculinity is tempered by presenting his cast of characters in moments of hubris or vulnerability as a means to investigate cultural stereotypes and popular constructs associated with power.
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