Overwinter, Alex Branch

Alex Branch is an interdisciplinary artist whose work often requires or implies the involvement of a human body to activate and realize the piece. The objects and installations she makes can be architectural, acoustic, kinetic. A person can be housed inside them, traverse the water in them. They can be worn or flipped through. They can be played or simply looked at but even in the looking, the body is imagined.

Her interest in transformation can be traced back to her childhood growing up on an island in the Pacific Northwest. As a child, she was fascinated by the mysterious objects that would wash ashore from unknown places, some from the natural world, and others that were human made but had been transformed by their time in the water. Barnacles and seaweed would attach to these objects, changing them into hybrids. “When I work with found objects in the present day, they carry with them a residue of a life lived. It’s not possible to know exactly where the objects have been, or who interacted with them, but the fullness and richness of their experience resonates.”

Overwintering is the process by which plants, animals and insects brace for, and survive the harsh winter months when food supplies are low and conditions are extreme. Plants store food in their root systems and become dormant. Insects bore into the ground, trees or buildings to escape extreme cold and enter a pupae state.