Death Over Life | Elizabeth Alexander
Opening reception:
Artists’ Talk:
Through disparate approaches, Elizabeth Alexander, Mara Trachtenberg, and Kailey Coppens explore domestic interiors as richly layered visual and psychological terrains where identities, values, and memories are formed.
About “Death Over Life”
Elizabeth Alexander will be presenting a selection of installation-based sculptures and photographs from her 2022 exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art, which featured a wallpaper motif with a gradient of hand-painted flowers in bloom and in decay. Throughout the creation of many of her works, Alexander uses processes of removal, accumulation and reconfiguration of floral motifs in wallpaper and porcelain dishes. She casts functional, decorative, and natural materials in hand-made paper – grafting them together to create new meaning from familiar surroundings.
“From the Book of Time”, a poem by Mary Oliver, contains the namesake for Elizabeth Alexander’s installation “and you didn’t even know enough to be sorry.” She says, “That section of the poem describes the feeling of relief when a storm is visible, but distant enough to not be impacted, yet alludes to an unwitting complicity or affectedness. Like the poem, there is evidence of time passing and changing the contents of this show: figures sit idly in images while they dissolve, porcelain tableware is worn down into delicate shells, floral decor is dying before one’s’ eyes. Scavenged domestic forms and floral decor are blended with cast storm debris to imbue these objects of order and comfort with the unpredictability and slow evolution of the natural world. Within these ‘beautiful disasters’ I work to bring forth the increasing vulnerability within our surroundings often hidden among the pleasantries. I work to envision the humanity embedded within our surroundings and uncover the porousness of our walls and the interconnectivity we often forget (or ignore) is there.”
About Elizabeth Alexander:
Elizabeth Alexander is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in sculptures and installations made of deconstructed domestic materials. She holds degrees in sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy, MFA, and Massachusetts College of Art, BFA, where she discovered the complex nature of dissecting objects of nostalgia. Alexander’s work has been exhibited at institutions across the country including the Museum of Art and Design, National Museum of Women in the Arts, North Carolina Museum of Art, Southeast Center for Contemporary Art, and Nasher Museum. Her work is included in permanent collections at the Crystal Bridges Museum, the North Carolina Museum of Art, Fidelity, and the Mint Museum. The National Museum of Women in the Arts included her work in the ‘Women to Watch” series. Alexander has been the recipient of awards from the Harpo foundation, the Society of Arts + Crafts, Blanche E. Colman foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and a Burke Prize nominee by the Museum of Arts and Design. Her work has been included in publications such as Hyperallergic, The Denver Post, the Boston Globe, Galerie Magazine, and the Modern Art Notes Podcast. She is represented by K Contemporary. Alexander is currently an Associate Professor and Sculpture Department Coordinator at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA.
