Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova (b. 1973 Havana, Cuba) immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1980 during the Mariel boat lift. He currently lives and works in Miami, FL. He attended the Ringling School of Art and Design and the New World School of the Arts where he was awarded the Frances Wolfson Endowed Visual Arts Scholarship, and has completed residencies at the Capri Palace in Capri, Italy in 2009 as well as the Vermont Studio Center in 2007. In 2011 he attended the artist-in-residence Ville de Paris-Cultures France program at the Centre international d’accueil et d’échanges des Recollets in Paris.
Rodriguez-Casanova has exhibited throughout the US and abroad in numerous exhibitions including installations at Socrates Sculpture Park and Sculpture Center in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: An Uneven Floor, Locust Projects, Miami (2010) and You might sleep but you will never dream, David Castillo Gallery, Miami (2009).
His work has been featured in various publications including ArtNews, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, Arte al Dia, Art Nexus and the Miami Herald to name a few. He is in the public permanent collections of CIFO: The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, FIU and the Bass Museum of Art as well as in several private collections throughout the United States.
He received the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual & Media Arts in 2004 and in 2011. In 2010, he was awarded the prestigious Cintas Foundation Fellowship for Visual Arts. His work will be featured in Una Mirada Multiple: Selections from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes curated by Osbel Suarez at this years Havana Biennal.