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Guest of Honour
Toby Leon
100% digital paper
Original Print, 60.96 x 81.28 x 0.25 cm
Limited Edition of 50
![Toby Leon](/assets/files/Media/yyKk6fQsEgb7gehAw/thumbnail/77955010f881dc81b35448e0df670deb.jpg)
Toby Leon
Return Policy
15 days money back guarantee
Return Policy Terms
• You're welcome to return or exchange any items in your order — open a return request within 7 days of delivery • All returned items must be delivered back to us within 15 days of delivery in their original condition • Please don’t send anything back before submitting a return request • Feel free to send back your items after we have reviewed and approved your return request • After we receive your returned items, we will notify you that we're satisfied with the condition of the returned item(s) • After we approve your return, you will be refunded via your original payment method within 1-2 weeks — includes processing time between our bank and yours
About Toby Leon
We imagine history into existence every day. Shaping the world around us as we go. And I remake histories with every piece. From a motley crew of tales tall and true. A melange of myths, signs and symbols. Every one ripe for my kitsch confections, which could all be legends one day...
Every piece I create is true. Sourced from truth and grounded by it. But never real. Reality's a fiction we're all subscribed to, which doesn't make it any less true. And that's the thing about the truth. Or the past. It moves in both directions. Myriad, in fact. Never sitting still or doing as it's told. Forever questioned, dissected, reframed and upended. Queered and inverted. Packaged and performed. Told, retold, adapted then sold. Evolving, like everything else. Which is why I like to think my art exists outside of time. Reaching for infinity. Not reality. A kaleidoscope of mish-mashed truths, which are only as surreal as we choose to make them...
Toby LeonAbout the Product
Guest of Honour is a madcap mashup of gods, beliefs, and cultures, like a spiritual blender set to high. It's a shout-out to the way gods and religions have been mixed and matched through history, forming a rainbow quilt of faith as motley as any crew’s ever been. All set against a backdrop of a Balinese temple with Cambodian flourish. Laced with the solemnity of Thai monks in prayer at the top of the stairs. Building into a diorama of how folklore, Hindusim and Buddhism blended together in SE Asia. Giving rise to many site specific faiths, like the Hindus of Bali, whose distinct form of worship incorporates local animism, ancestor worship or Pitru Paksha, and reverence for Buddhist saints or Bodhisattava. Or Buddhism in Thailand, which integrated with folk religion (Bon) as well as Chinese religions from the large Thai Chinese population.
The Guest of Honour wears a crown but carries the weight of all this mish-mashed faith. An ecumenical bird god, right smack in the middle of all the faith-based politicking that put him in his place. Decked out in a Chinese tortoise shell crown, deer antlers, and these shiny totems. Bedazzling anyone who lingers long enough to hear how they’re getting it all wrong. A leaping, squawking symbol of how we roll one religion into another, and another, until they’re flattened out by the weight of history and all their quirks become part of the scenery. Which happens wherever you go, no matter how far you go back. Just like the Romans copy-pasting their gods from the Greeks. Or adopting gods from places they conquered to help their Roman pantheon fit right in.
"Guest of Honour" shows the intriguing magic of faith being manufactured for the masses to empower a small few. Served here with a smile — a whole song and dance — asking you to think about how faith can act like a drug, a thing that brings us together but also keeps us in a never-ending cycle of "bread and circuses."