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Leslie Lehr Daly

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Cincinnati, OH
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Leslie Lehr Daly

  • About
  • Political Work
  • Steel & Mixed Media
  • Large Scale & Installations
  • Masks We Wear
  • Pieces of Me
  • News
  • Contact
Fault Lines- Democracy Dismantled

Political Work

Political Work

Fault Lines- Democracy Dismantled

Fault Lines- Democracy Dismantled

The 27 Amendments are dismantled and recomposed into a single, unstable body. Cut apart and woven together, the text loses its linear authority and becomes something precarious- dependent on tension to hold its shape. Burned openings interrupt the language, signaling absence, erasure, and selective memory. Barbed wire hovers above, a quiet but unmistakable boundary. What was written to protect now appears conditional, accessible only through force and restraint. This work asks whether rights endure through preservation- or through resistance- when their meaning is tested by power.

Silenced

Silenced

The Constitution was meant to be a shield- a document of protection, rights, and equality. But time and history have revealed the fragility of that promise. In Silenced, I confront the ways this sacred text has been pierced, both literally and symbolically, by acts of violence, discrimination, neglect and power.

The work bears the marks of wounds- torn edges, punctured surfaces, the scars that refuse to heal. Each hole represents a place where justice has failed to hold, where voices have been silenced, and where the promise of “We the People” has been selectively applied.

The physical act of shooting becomes a metaphor: a violent intervention that exposes the vulnerability of ideals once thought invincible. The Constitution, revered and resilient, becomes a body- one that bleeds, one that suffers, one that must reckon with its own contradictions. It asks the viewer to look through the holes- to see what has been lost, what still stands, and what we choose to ignore. In the light that passes through these wounds, there is both mourning and possibility- the hope that by confronting the damage, we might finally begin to repair it.

This piece is not an act of destruction, but of truth-telling.

Silenced- detail

Silenced- detail

The Shape of Control

The Shape of Control

This partial torso, enrobed in fragile paper strips, some bearing language that embodies the lived reality of women’s bodies under siege. The paper suggests law, policy and rhetoric.– thin, easily torn, yet weaponized when wrapped tightly around flesh

Bullets are shot through the torso, tearing into paper and flesh alike, marking the wounds created when autonomy is denied, and decisions are seized by the state. What is framed as law is experienced as harm. The body becomes evidence of what happens when women are stripped of choice.: injury, replace care, force, replaces, consent, and governance leaves scars that do not heal quietly.

The Shape of Control- view 2

The Shape of Control- view 2

Suppression

Suppression

The First Amendment forms the background of this work, its text scorched by fire and partially whitewashed- both acts of control. The burning speaks to punishment and intimidation: the whitewashing to erasure, revision, and the sanitizing of dissent.

 In the foreground, mouths and lips emerge in different colors, each one marked by a distinct act of silencing. One is entangled behind a cage, another covered in barbed wire that cuts rather than contains while another is locked, silenced. Bullets and spent shell casings punctuate the surface, marking moments when speech is met not with debate, but with force.

Together, these silenced mouths expose how freedom of expression is selectively preserved, unevenly enforced, and violently withdrawn- until the First Amendment exists not as a right, but as a fragile illusion.

Suppression- detail 1

Suppression- detail 1

Suppression- detail 2

Suppression- detail 2

Breaking Through

Breaking Through

Breaking Through percolated in my head before the 2024 Presidential elections between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. There was hope then…Hope that Kamala Harris would finally break through the political glass ceiling. This piece was created in the hope that the dream would be realized. It is currently held in a private collection.

She steps onto the stairs, not with fanfare, but with a calm certainty. Each rise is a familiar weight, a path walked by so many before her- their shoes cover the ground below. She reaches the top, and the ceiling is not an obstacle but a reflection- she is the light, breaking through, not because the sky demanded it, but because her presence redefines what is possible. And in that quiet moment, the future begins anew…

Breaking Through- view 2

Breaking Through- view 2

When Free Speech Is No LongerFree

When Free Speech Is No LongerFree

This work confronts the violation of the First Amendment – the right to free speech- not as an abstract legal concept, but as a lived reality. The bound mouths represent voices silenced through intimidation, censorship, retaliation, and fear. They reflect journalists attacked, protestors criminalized, marginalized communities dismissed or punished for speaking truth, and dissent reframed as disloyalty. The diversity of the mouths underscores a crucial truth: while repression affects many, it does not do so equally.

This piece stands as both an indictment and a warning. When speech is bound, democracy is already burning.

Truth To Power - Walking on Eggshells

Truth To Power - Walking on Eggshells

Truth to Power- Walking on Eggshells explores the fragility of truth and the weight of justice. Each crushed eggshell marks the silence between justice and courage- what it costs to speak truth in a world uneasy with honesty.

Through delicate yet resilient materials, this work reveals that justice, though fragile, is forged through vulnerability, persistence, and the quiet breaking that leads to transformation.

Copyright 2026 by Leslie Daly