Alexandra Carter

Through research and paintings produced at Saari, I am working on the logical extension of my original project proposal, titled “The Fruits of (In)fertility” which focused on bodily and agricultural fertility through the lens of my upbringing on a New England cranberry farm, and in light of my own infertility treatment, which I was undergoing at the time of writing the proposal. 

I now have a baby girl, expanding my original position into that of motherhood. Now, not only is my work imbued with ideas of fertility and fecundity of land and body, but also the role of mother, of birther, and the idea of the monstrous feminine as coined by author Barbara Creed. I use the fluid, explosive qualities of my primary painting medium of ink on drafting film to emphasize a spitting, leaking, explosive maternal body. 

Alexandra Carter (b. 1985 in Boston) lives and works in San Diego, California. She received an MFA from Goldsmiths University of London in 2015 and a BA from Rhodes College in Memphis in 2009. Recent solo exhibitions include “A Sense of Heat in Her Brain” at Luna Anaïs Gallery Los Angeles (2020), “Berries for Baubo” (2019), and “All gods are hot” (2018) at Radiant Space Los Angeles. Other solo exhibitions include Fusion Gallery (Turin, Italy), Southfork (Memphis), Projecto’ace Foundation (Buenos Aires), and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. She has been selected for residency projects nationally and internationally, including KulturKontakt Austria (Vienna), Qwatz (Rome), Graniti Murales (Sicily), Vice~Versa Foundation (Goa, India), RECSIM (Jashipur, India), Galerija-Muzej Lendava (Slovenia), and the Kentucky Foundation for Women (Prospect, KY).