STATEMENT
Following a studio accident that confined me to bed, I began what has become a multi-decade sculptural investigation into one of the most universal yet overlooked ‘theaters’ of human experience. The bed—where we are born, dream, heal, desire, suffer, and die—emerge as both subject and stage: a panoply of our humanity.
This inquiry developed into BED, an evolving body of over one hundred interrelated sculptures that translate language into form. Each work originates from a word or phrase containing “bed”—bedtime, bed of roses, bedfellows—materializing the latent narratives embedded within everyday speech. Through this process, language morphs into object, and the familiar is recast as something psychologically charged, symbolic, ironic, iconic, humorous and even disquieting. Comedy and pathos coexist with irony, sensuality, and living; the works oscillate between intimacy and universality.
Extending this investigation into participatory space, I created BED UNMADE, an ongoing global project that collects images of unmade beds submitted from around the world. This archive transforms a private, quotidian gesture into a collective portrait of presence and absence, offering a quiet anthropology of lived experience.
Parallel to this work, my portraiture translates interior consciousness to an external presence. Moving beyond likeness, I approach the portrait as a site of psychological exchange—an encounter shaped by dialogue, projection, and revelation. Inspired as much by psychoanalytic frameworks as by classical traditions, these works seek to externalize the unseen: the subject’s self-perception, contradictions, and inner narratives. Symbolic elements—gestures, objects, and constructed forms—emerge as carriers of meaning, displacing the purely representational in favor of a more complex, layered truth.
For more than 20 years, my vision has been sustained and transformed into the immutable material of bronze in collaboration with the world’s largest art foundry in China. This relationship is culminating in my first monumental project - another “first” -the transformation of the Major Arcana of the Tarot into a 3-dimensional experience.
My practice, formed in Paris, established in New York, and realized across international foundries, is grounded in a sustained engagement with material, language, and the human condition. Whether through the recurring motif of the bed, the charged presence of the human figure, or centuries-old mysticism of alchemistry, the work invites the viewer into a space of recognition- at once personal and shared.
BIOGRAPHY
Leah Poller is an American sculptor whose transnational practice spans Europe, the United States, and China. Born in Pennsylvania, she received her classical training at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where she lived and worked for over two decades. Immersed in a dynamic, multicultural milieu, she engaged with leading artists and intellectuals across France, Spain, Italy, and Latin America—an experience that continues to inform the global perspective of her work.
Upon returning to the United States in 1992, Poller established The Art Alliance in a SoHo loft in New York, where she developed a reputation for introducing significant mid and
late-career international artists to American audiences, including Jacques Soisson,
Jean-Robert Ipoustéguy, Ugo Attardi, Bernardo Torrens, and Mario Murúa. Ahead of her times, her salon-style evenings revived the European tradition of intellectual and artistic exchange, while experimental programs such as “Frame It, It’s Yours” and “Yin-Yang: A Social/Cultural Laboratory” anticipated participatory and concept-driven curatorial practices. Over the course of her career, Poller has curated more than 140 exhibitions worldwide.
During this period, she initiated her ongoing sculptural series BED, a body of over one hundred works exploring language, symbolism, and the human condition through the recurring motif of the bed. The series has been exhibited extensively in galleries and institutions across Europe, Mexico, China, and the United States.
In 2003, Poller was appointed Director of Intercambios de Arte y Cultura Internacional, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering cultural exchange throughout the Americas. In this role, she played a key part in the restoration of a major twentieth-century mural in Morelia, Mexico, which she identified as the work of Philip Guston.
Since 2009, Poller has been based in New York, where she continues to develop the BED series alongside its participatory extension, BED UNMADE (www.bedunmade.com), an evolving global archive of unmade beds that transforms private spaces into a collective visual anthropology.
Parallel to her conceptual work, Poller has sustained a practice in sculptural portraiture rooted in her classical training. Her portrait series, including “Women Warriors” and “Eyes of the Soul”, translate interior states into external form through symbolic elements such as architectonic headdresses, offering a psychologically layered alternative to traditional representation.
Beginning in 2010, Poller entered into a long-term collaboration with a major bronze casting foundry in China, enabling the realization of increasingly ambitious and large-scale works. This partnership has led to exhibitions and recognition in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong, including her selection as the only American artist to exhibit in the Beijing Biennale of Female Sculptors, and her 2024-25 exhibition “Alchemy of matter at the prestigious GIO Art Center in Beijing.
Her work and career have been featured on CNN and Fox Television, as well as in numerous international art publications. Poller has lectured widely and conducted workshops on creativity and artistic process.
Poller served as Guest Editor for New Observations, the influential literary and art journal founded in the 1980’s, and is a Member of the Advisory Board of the New York Society of Women Artists, and Chairperson for their PR/marketing.
Poller divides her time between New York, Paris, Italy, and China, maintaining an active studio practice and international exhibition schedule.