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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
- The Keeper, 2023
- Ink and gold leaf on drafting film
- 17 x 14 in
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$1,000
Similar to the larger piece “In Vitro”, this piece reflects on the body as a vessel and producer, a protector of what’s inside, influenced by my experience of fertility treatment (IVF) and pregnancy. The vessel shape becomes dominant here, emphasizing her containment. Meanwhile, her bodily form is anything but contained: bulbous, pregnant, and dribbling into a snail like form, the emphasis is on the parts of the body that make and feed life, the parts which feel the most pressure, physically and psychologically.