BIO
Alexandra Carter (1985) was born in Boston, USA. She graduated from Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, after also attending the Accademia dell-Arte in Arezzo, Italy, and Lesley College in Cambridge, MA. She will start her Post-Baccalaureate Certificate Program this year at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, USA.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis (2009) and Broad Avenue Gallery, Memphis (2007), USA
GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
Lendava Synagogue, Slovenia; Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay,Gallery 263/ Cambridge, 808 Gallery, Boston University, USA; 2010: West Side Arts, Providence, RI/ The Temple, Boston, MA, USA. 2009- Estel Gallery, Nashville, TN /Athens Institute for Contemporary Art. Athens, GA /Clough-Hanson Gallery, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, USA. 2008: Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ / Odessa, Memphis, TN / Material Gallery, Memphis, TN, USA; Circolo Artistico, Arezzo, Italy.
RESIDENCIES:
LindArt Colony, “Co-operate Vol. 5.” Lendava Castle, Slovenia; Hopscotch House Residency. Kentucky Foundation for Women, Prospect, KY.
AWARDS:
Dionysian Award for Studio Art and Susan Tidball Means Award for Original Research in Gender Studies.Rhodes College, Memphis,USA.
Alexandra Carter (1985) was born in Boston, USA. She graduated from Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, after also attending the Accademia dell-Arte in Arezzo, Italy, and Lesley College in Cambridge, MA. She will start her Post-Baccalaureate Certificate Program this year at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, USA.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis (2009) and Broad Avenue Gallery, Memphis (2007), USA
GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
Lendava Synagogue, Slovenia; Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay,Gallery 263/ Cambridge, 808 Gallery, Boston University, USA; 2010: West Side Arts, Providence, RI/ The Temple, Boston, MA, USA. 2009- Estel Gallery, Nashville, TN /Athens Institute for Contemporary Art. Athens, GA /Clough-Hanson Gallery, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, USA. 2008: Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ / Odessa, Memphis, TN / Material Gallery, Memphis, TN, USA; Circolo Artistico, Arezzo, Italy.
RESIDENCIES:
LindArt Colony, “Co-operate Vol. 5.” Lendava Castle, Slovenia; Hopscotch House Residency. Kentucky Foundation for Women, Prospect, KY.
AWARDS:
Dionysian Award for Studio Art and Susan Tidball Means Award for Original Research in Gender Studies.Rhodes College, Memphis,USA.
Alexandra Carter
EXHIBITIONS
Drift
10.08.2011 to 16.09.2011
ARTIST STATEMENT
In making paintings, I am interested in the human figure amidst a dynamic of concurring emotions, identities, and psychosocial relationships. I investigate my own background while evoking themes of gender, fairy tale, and personal growth. Compositions reveal characters engaged in an ambiguous narrative, each figure made specific in details such as facial expression, body language, and dress. For many of these characters, I use myself as my model, employing my female identity in the conceptual content of my work.
My recent work evidences a profound reconnection with my familial origins and the farming culture that defined my childhood. The daughter of a cranberry farmer, I grew up amidst a world of rubber waders, intricate mechanics, and corrals of red berries. Through my compositions, I revisit that environment while tapping into the emotional tension that is inextricably linked with family. In Drift, I reimagined Shakespeare´s Ophelia within this intensely personal context. Long a subject revistited throughout painting´s history, Ophelia´s self-sacrificial, somewhat pathetic demise is reimagined in contrast here. I reference my own body as my model, set amidst the berry pool--an icon of the cranberry harvest. Each work was exectued using colored inks on layered sheets of polyester film. Painting on both sides of each sheet, and using two to three sheets per painting, I was able to experiment with depth gained through the frosty, translucent layers, working to enhance the ethereal, ominous quality of the figures and their setting.
The pairing of Ophelia imagery and that of the splattered, scarlet berries emphasizes the visceral connotations of the mark, as well as her connection with the natural world. Suffering, weakness, and madness--just a few of the characteristics she often signifies--can be interpreted in dichotomy with self-awareness, autonomy, and sensuality. Through the aesthetic conventions attached to Ophelia (the floating figure, her ambivalent facial expressions), as well as those in the scheme of my own work, I appropriate the overused rhetoric of this literary character in a dialogue with my own history.
In making paintings, I am interested in the human figure amidst a dynamic of concurring emotions, identities, and psychosocial relationships. I investigate my own background while evoking themes of gender, fairy tale, and personal growth. Compositions reveal characters engaged in an ambiguous narrative, each figure made specific in details such as facial expression, body language, and dress. For many of these characters, I use myself as my model, employing my female identity in the conceptual content of my work.
My recent work evidences a profound reconnection with my familial origins and the farming culture that defined my childhood. The daughter of a cranberry farmer, I grew up amidst a world of rubber waders, intricate mechanics, and corrals of red berries. Through my compositions, I revisit that environment while tapping into the emotional tension that is inextricably linked with family. In Drift, I reimagined Shakespeare´s Ophelia within this intensely personal context. Long a subject revistited throughout painting´s history, Ophelia´s self-sacrificial, somewhat pathetic demise is reimagined in contrast here. I reference my own body as my model, set amidst the berry pool--an icon of the cranberry harvest. Each work was exectued using colored inks on layered sheets of polyester film. Painting on both sides of each sheet, and using two to three sheets per painting, I was able to experiment with depth gained through the frosty, translucent layers, working to enhance the ethereal, ominous quality of the figures and their setting.
The pairing of Ophelia imagery and that of the splattered, scarlet berries emphasizes the visceral connotations of the mark, as well as her connection with the natural world. Suffering, weakness, and madness--just a few of the characteristics she often signifies--can be interpreted in dichotomy with self-awareness, autonomy, and sensuality. Through the aesthetic conventions attached to Ophelia (the floating figure, her ambivalent facial expressions), as well as those in the scheme of my own work, I appropriate the overused rhetoric of this literary character in a dialogue with my own history.