Intended to decay while on public view, “Strange Fruit” is made up of empty fruit skins that have been sutured together and sprawled across the gallery floor by the artist. The work was created in New York in the 1990s, during the early days of the ongoing global AIDS crisis, before any life-saving treatments were available. This was an era marked by tragic loss and the stigmatization of queer people and people of color, along with sex workers and drug users. In this climate of discrimination and neglect, people were dying daily, their bodies treated by the US government and healthcare industries as disposable. After the deaths of several close friends, including fellow artist David Wojnarowicz, Leonard began to sew these fruit pieces. Out of that process, over a period of six years, “Strange Fruit” emerged.

The work’s title is taken from the anti-lynching song of the same name written by Jewish-American composer Abel Meeropol and famously recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939 with lyrics like, “Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root / Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”

Recalling memento mori still-life paintings, which incorporate imagery such as fruit and flowers to symbolize life’s fragility, in this work, the process of decomposition unfolds before our eyes. Both effigy of, and elegy to, the lives of loved ones, “Strange Fruit” offers a haunting reflection on histories of violent persecution and a poignant meditation on mortality and transformation.