Photograph: Garry Trinh
I ACKNOWLEDGE THE GADIGAL PEOPLE OF EORA NATION, THE traditional custodians of the land on which I HAVE THE PRIVILEGE TO live and woRK, AND PAY MY DEEPEST RESPECTS TO ELDERS PAST, PRESENT AND EMERGING. Sovereignty was never ceded.
Owen Leong is a contemporary artist based on Gadigal land in Sydney, Australia, working with sculpture, installation, photography, and video to explore counternarratives of queer world-making. Drawing on personal mythologies and kink languages, he examines power, control, and care to reimagine embodiment and intimacy. His work centres QTIPOC pleasure as an act of political agency and healing.
In 2026, Leong was an artist-in-residence at Art Omi, New York, and presented the solo exhibition Heavy Leather at SYRUP, Sydney. He was awarded the Chey Fellowship to present the major solo exhibition Bitten Peach 分桃 at IAC Western Sydney University in 2024. Leong has received the National Photography Prize, the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award, and was a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize.
Leong has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally including the Art Gallery of NSW; Art Gallery of South Australia; QAGOMA; Singapore Art Museum; Today Art Museum, Beijing; Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai; and the National Museum in Poznań, Poland. He has held artist residencies at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha; Hong Kong Arts Centre; Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Shanghai; Tokyo Wonder Site; Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; esea contemporary, Manchester; and Artspace, Sydney.
His work is held in public and institutional collections including Creative Australia, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery, Gold Coast City Gallery, Murray Art Museum Albury, Newcastle Art Gallery, Western Sydney University, Swatch Art Peace Hotel Collection, Shanghai, and University of Salford Art Collection, UK, and private collections in Australia and internationally.
Leong received his MFA from the University of New South Wales, where he was awarded an Australian Postgraduate Award.