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Alexandra Carter: The Mother Shell from Alexandra Carter

ARTIST STATEMENT

I paint the female body in states of transformation—pregnancy, birth, postpartum—to reveal the visceral realities of motherhood. I want to know how this experience consumes, ruptures, and remakes the self. I’m drawn to the monstrous feminine—the reproductive body as both feared and revered, vola

Growing up on a cranberry farm in Massachusetts, I was immersed in cycles of fertilization, growth, and harvest—rhythms that shape my work. Cranberries become metaphors for the reproductive body: swollen, fertile, bleeding. The harvest’s dependence on flooding echoes my fascination with contain

I often use my own body as a model, staging performances for the camera to explore personal and archetypal imagery. I draw from folklore and mythology, reimagining figures whose transformations mirror the physical and psychological shifts of motherhood. These mythic bodies—splitting, mutating—s

Through these paintings, I confront the contradictions of motherhood—its tenderness and violence, power and erasure, creation and consumption—an experience that is both universal and deeply personal.... more

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Alexandra Carter
Amazons' Embryo, 2023
Ink on drafting film
48 x 59 in
$3,400

This piece references mythological figures (Amazons, sirens), reproductive rights, and fertility. The Amazons were matriarchal societies of female warriors in ancient mythology, said to have removed one breast for better aim with their bow and arrow. These single-breasted figures are perhaps a mutual entity, sharing one set of breasts, and one fetus. There are two womb-like blobs here: one empty, one with the prints of a baby, emphasizing the idea of emptiness, pregnancy, and choice. Meanwhile, there is a joyous undertone of partnership, of doubling.