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Alexandra Carter: The Mother Shell from Alexandra Carter
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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
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
- Alexandra Carter
- Gravida, 2025
- Acrylic ink on drafting film
- 17 x 14 in
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$1,000
Gravida contemplates the porous threshold between mother and child, where cells, memories, and emotions intermingle. The swelling blob-like form embraces the aesthetics of excess, revealing the maternal body as both chaotic and serene, monstrous and tender. Layers of blue and green ink float over a hidden field of neon pink painted on the reverse of the translucent film, glimpsed only in flashes—like the traces a child leaves within the mother’s body.