ARTIST STATEMENT
I work in textile and movement to explore personal and collective preservation, restoration, and expansion. Handmade banners (dyed, stitched, torn, appliqued, inked, embroidered) reference the visual, kinetic, and metaphoric elements of parades. They often feature intimate stories and totems of personal history; the pieces themselves becoming acts of reclamation, documentation, myth creation. My work prods the spaces between our individual and collective parades of self – assuming an audience, crafted for display – and our experience of living within that presentation: what do we say/display of ourselves to ourselves? How does it shape us as we shape it? Each piece I make is worked entirely by hand - pushing into the intimacy and tenderness that cloth allows, in contrast and/or conversation with the boldness of parade.
Photo by Ryan Stopera
BIO
Alexandra Beaumont is a textile artist and dancer. She was born and raised in South Carolina to a Jamaican father and American mother, both working musicians. She attended the residential South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities throughout high school, focusing on dance and visual arts, and went on to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY where she studied fashion design. After working in New York City as a menswear designer, she returned to a fine arts practice, incorporating her love for fabrics and hand sewing. She now lives in Minneapolis, MN, where she makes work centering themes of personal reconstruction, community, and celebratory display. Her first solo exhibition “Version” was presented at Ridgewater College in Minnesota in the fall of 2022. She is a 2022 recipient of the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council “Next Step Fund” grant, and a 2023 Forecast Early Career Project grantee. She is a member of PF Studios in Minneapolis, MN and contributes to the development team of Public Functionary, a gallery, performance space, and café supporting BIPOC and LGBTQ artists in the Twin Cities.