Elizabeth Alexander is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in sculptures and installations made from deconstructed domestic materials. Through labored processes separating decorative print from found objects she unearths elements of human behavior and hidden emotional lives that exist within the walls of our homes. She holds degrees in sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy, MFA, and Massachusetts College of Art, BFA, where she discovered the complex nature of dissecting objects of nostalgia. Alexander’s work has recently been exhibited in the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Museum of Art and Design, the Nasher Museum, the Southeast Center for Contemporary Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and is included in permanent collections at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, AR and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC. She is currently an Associate Professor and Sculpture Department Coordinator at Montserrat College of Art.

Statement

Elizabeth Alexander uses cast paper and common household materials to unpack the social, cultural, and psychological implications of the American ideals of domesticity, success, and safety. This work can range from objects such as a disassembled teacup, to a photo series of altered environments, to site-specific installations with sound and performance. From a stock of thrifted items, the domestic becomes raw material, and she harnesses the symbolic weight these items carry. Contrary to the idyllic image of the unblemished American home, she works to bring forward the pervasive chaos that is embedded in our shared humanity through purposeful acts of deconstruction and renovation.

Alexander’s interest in exploring American values and the idealism of home stem from a loving yet tumultuous working-class upbringing where home was the center of her world. Regarding home as a place that is shaped by our stories and bears witness to our secret lives, she uses her own experience to explore ways we, in turn, are shaped by our homes and the activity within them. It is the place where hidden pressures, values, and power structures are taught, enacted, and reinforced. Where one’s security and safety can turn on a dime. In this series of ‘beautiful disasters’ she works to envision the humanity embedded within our surroundings, uncover the porousness of our walls, and questions the sanctity of this material symbol with anxious wonder.

Elizabeth Alexander

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