My Roots
Alexandra Ross
April 1 – June 30, 2021
Biography & Artist Statement
Alexandra Ross creates installations based on her experience being raised by parents whose isolationism, commitment to unschooling and frequent moves created a life experience of disruption and survival. Now based in rural Manitoba, her work explores themes of personal chaos and emergent internal order within that chaos. Her installations include work in clay, print, and photography as well as assemblage sculptures containing found objects interacting with each medium. Since arriving in Canada she has obtained her BFA at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art (2020). Alexandra mounted her first solo exhibition at the Steinbach Cultural Arts Centre (2015) and has since participated in a number of group shows in Winnipeg as well as a print exchange in Grand Forks (2019). Alexandra was awarded the Undergraduate Research Award (2018) under professor Grace Nickel as well as two UMSU scholarships. Currently, she is completing a year-long placement in the Rural Artist Mentorship Program with Brenna George through Manitoba Arts Network and Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art.
In my recent body of work My Roots I use a combination of photography, screen printing, and clay, to explore the intersection where chaos meets order and where beauty meets pain in my personal narrative. In my photography I seek to capture myself in a past moment of time, frozen with objects that once shaped the core of who I am. I use print to formalize these objects into a system, accessible to me only with the benefit of retrospection. My clay work expresses the inner turmoil, growth, and emergence of a self through experience, while my assemblage sculptures combine each element and bind them to a root system. For each of these root sculptures, I spin a thread from a drop spindle and a spinning wheel. These sculptures express a singular circumstance from my past, that shapes my present, and will be with me into the future. In a final performance, I will take wool from each suspended root system and spin a new thread to be installed around my body–my living roots.