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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
Eat me maggot mom, 2019
Ink, oil, image transfers and gold leaf on drafting film
56 x 38 in
$3,000

This piece alludes to the succulent, fertile grounds of my childhood alongside mixed aesthetic traditions of maternal figures. The title is inspired by a mother, Izanami of Japanese myth, who gave all for her children but whose story ends tragically in her bodily decay. Using image transfers of dried, shriveled up cranberries I allude to the breast as something that is spent, used up, and deflated, perhaps specifically related to breastfeeding. This piece explores the difficult relationship between aging, beauty, fertility and the aesthetics of the maternal grotesque.