joce leo

@heldbystarspress

joce leo (b. 2000) (she/they) is a writer, artist, and anti-carceral care worker co-creating at the intersections of writing, psychology, and image-making. joce received her bachelor of arts in psychology and visual arts at Roger Williams University in 2023 and is expected to receive their Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from Maine College of Art & Design in May 2025. since 2018, joce has worked in a variety of social work adjacent jobs like a memory disorders caregiver, a children’s art educator, a graduate teaching assistant, a writing coach, a behavioral health professional, and a peer mentor. this falls under the umbrella term of “care work,” much like their artistic practice. she believes that femme sadness is inherently political and that suffering outwardly is a form of political protest. as a micro-memoir writer, joce’s practice is always informed by abolition-centered practices rooted in the acknowledgment of lived experience as “expert.”


as a transdisciplinary artist, language and poetry are at the core of my work, and i move across the media of photography, film and video, book arts, and performance. i explore destructive processes such as tearing, collage, stitching and embroidery, chemicals, and performance to draw similarities to physical touch and queer intimacy. i move between digital processes and tactile processes to encapsulate my juxtaposed lived experiences of surviving sexual violence, eating disorders, and coercive psychiatric
incarceration while also believing in the radical, loving, corrective capacity of humans.

my writing and artistic practice is rooted in the evaluation of complicity in harm, the bringing attention to the site of the wound—and the distancing from western ideals of “individualism,” “independence,” and “professionalism” to truly hold people when they are suffering. my practice identifies the historical roots of the misogyny that supports the mental health industrial complex and evaluates how we can harness the inherently political nature of femme suffering to assert the autonomy of femme suffering as means of political protest. by defending the diaristic, the melodramatic, and the “over-exaggerated” through the form of micro-memoir and poetry, i am creating a space for the pathologized to exist in their her full sensitivity.
working in parallel and in partnership with psychology, social practice, and peer support theories, i lean into the curiosity that leads individuals to read memoirs and autofiction in order to create a space where language is co-created and reclaimed. the words and language that were once used to label, pathologize, and criminalize are subverted and re-used. the words and language that were once used to tell us to “be quiet” to “stop exaggerating,” to shame and victim blame—are now ours to hold, bend, and break.

yes, i am hysterical.
yes, i exaggerate.
yes, i am sensitive, i feel so deeply.
yes, i am dramatic.
yes, i can even be melodramatic.
yes, i am irritable.
yes, i can be unreliable.
and so what?
(i am not a cop or a politician.)