23 Jan Parting Gift: Fitting in America by Leonard Suryajaya
“Alien Aunties” from Parting Gift: Fitting in America, ©Leonard Suryajaya, 2025
PARTING GIFT: FITTING IN AMERICA
BY LEONARD SURYAJAYA
In Parting Gift: Fitting in America, Leonard Suryajaya creates vibrant, elaborately staged family portraits made between the U.S. and Indonesia to explore belonging, care, and who gets to be seen as family in America.
February 27 – April 18, 2026
COLORADO PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS CENTER
1200 LINCOLN ST, DENVER, CO 80203
Art exhibit viewing times: Tues. – Fri. (11 am – 5 pm); Sat. (noon – 4 pm)
OPENING RECEPTION & SPECIAL PROGRAMMING:
FEBRUARY 27 & 28
Opening Reception
Friday, February 27 between 5:00 – 8:00 pm at CPAC. This event is free and open to the public. Artist Leonard Suryajaya will be in attendance.
In-Person Artist Panel Discussion
Join us on Saturday, February 28, at 1:00 pm for a moderated discussion with artists Leonard Suryajaya and Matthew Finley about what happens when personal history becomes artistic material. Together, they’ll explore vulnerability, performance, queerness, and the evolving definitions of family and belonging that shape their practices.
To listen to an audio recording of the panel discussion press play below.
PARTING GIFT: FITTING IN AMERICA
Parting Gift: Fitting in America examines family portraiture as a site where private life collides with national systems of belonging. Rooted in staged portraits made between America and Indonesia, the work asks who is allowed to appear as “family” in America, and under what conditions.
While the artist settled in the United States, his family remains in Indonesia, and the portraits are sustained through ongoing return and separation. This transnational distance shapes the work’s attention to care, effort, and persistence, positioning family not as a fixed unit, but as a relationship continually maintained across borders.
America is treated not as a backdrop, but as a governing structure shaped by borders, immigration policy, race, religion, and marriage law. At a moment when definitions of citizenship, family, and belonging are increasingly contested, the work foregrounds how recognition and protection are unevenly distributed.
By placing his family alongside unexpected pairings—such as Amish families, gun-owning Americans, neighbors, and chosen kin—the work expands the portrait beyond bloodlines to include community as an essential context. Queerness operates not only as identity, but as method, opening space for alternative forms of care and kinship. Together, these portraits challenge inherited definitions of family and ask what must be relinquished, translated, or reimagined in order to fit within the American frame.
EXHIBITION PREVIEW
ABOUT ARTIST LEONARD SURYAJAYA
Leonard Suryajaya (Chicago, IL) uses his work to test the boundaries of intimacy, community and family. He uses photography, video, performance and installation to show how the everyday is layered with histories, meanings and potential.
BFA, 2013, California State University, Fullerton; MFA, 2015, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; 2017, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Selected exhibition venues include Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago; Arsenale Nord, Venice; Benaki Museum, Greece; Photoforum Pasquart, Switzerland; National Library, Singapore; Wrightwood 659, Chicago; Aperture Gallery, NY; The Block Museum, Chicago; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Frost Museum, Miami. His work is included in collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Block Museum, Vontobel Art Collection, Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection, Mana Contemporary and Center for Photography at Woodstock. Awards: DCASE Esteemed Artist Award, Aaron Siskind Foundation Award, Artadia Awards, Robert Giard Foundation Fellowship, CENTER Excellence in Multimedia Award, New Artist Society Award, James Weinstein Memorial Fellowship, Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Prize for Emerging Artist, The Santo Foundation Fellowship.