Alexis Hunter
July 11 - August 21
Multidisciplinary
Alexis Hunter is an identity-based, multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in Austin, TX. She earned a BFA from Texas State University in Studio Art with a concentration in painting, graduating summa cum laude (2022). Recent solo and group exhibitions include BINARY (Who Do You Belong To?); ICOSA Gallery, Austin (2021); Own it, examine it, and confront it head-on, DORF Gallery, Austin (2021); Signs of Life, Texas State Galleries, San Marcos (2022); Alexis Hunter, Blue Star Arts Complex, San Antonio (2021) and Resurfacing, The George Washington Carver Museum, Austin (2021). She has also been selected for the third edition of Big Medium’s LINE Residency (2022). Alexis is the founder of Others, an ongoing publication project documenting the faces and stories of biracial individuals in central Texas. Her work explores self-image through racial identity, mental health, the female body, and the male gaze.
”I use sculpture, painting, performance, and social practice to constantly push myself to my limits to deliver bodies of work at their most honest and vulnerable state. Throughout my experience making art, I’ve found that your best work is made when a certain level of comfort is sacrificed. My current projects, BINARY, and Others are informed by my experience of being biracial, specifically half Black, half white, and how I see that experience intersect with social constructs like identity and race.
BINARY consists of paintings and sculptures communicating what it’s like to exist on the threshold between Black and white cultures. Using sociological concepts like in-group vs out-group effects and the basic human psychology of Othering, BINARY challenges the dominant narratives and stereotypes that dictate the biracial social experience. To have each work be an authentic expression of myself, I incorporate personal materials, like my hair, into my paintings.
My hair being a large factor of my identity, it can be likened to a DNA signature or a time capsule. The viewer is heavily considered in each piece. I place abstracted figures in typical social scenes and metaphysical spaces to further communicate feelings of tension and unfamiliarity. This series provides an intimate look into my insecurities as an outsider. Others is the final chapter of BINARY.
Others is an ongoing publication project documenting the faces and stories of biracial individuals in central Texas. The title references those who have always felt a sense of dread when filling out the ‘race and ethnicity’ category of surveys, applications, census forms, and check-in forms in the waiting rooms of medical facilities. Forced to answer with ‘other’ if not a different, equally uncomfortable, answer. The publication includes portraits shot on 35mm film and each participant received a questionnaire style interview with questions pertaining to their social experience and racial identity as a biracial person. This project highlights and celebrates the individuals that navigate the space between cultures and offers connection and togetherness to an otherwise isolating experience.
My inspiration and references I use in my practice range from literature and dissertations like Dr. Karis Campion’s, “You think you’re Black?” Exploring Black mixed-race experiences of Black rejection, Ethnic and Racial Studies”, to the technique and concepts of biracial contemporary artists making their own identity-based work, like Jennifer Ling Datchuk or Sasha Gordon.
I’m interested in what happens when you lay yourself and your biggest insecurities bare and witnessed. And the resulting transformation and a better understanding of yourself and your identity that follows.”
