WHOLED UP: Alexandria Clay

WHOLED UP
INTRODUCING ALEXANDRIA CLAY

May 21st through June 27th
OPENING RECEPTION, Friday June 4th, 6-9pm
Durham-based artist, Alexandrea Clay writes, “At the apex of the pandemic, we bore witness to massive gatherings to protest continued racial injustice. But a demonstrated strength in numbers held a new level of risk for people of color who hoped to see change in their communities.”

This is the crux of Wholed Up, by the second of Lump’s, Artist First Fund recipients. In it, Alexandria explores and celebrates closeness during a time when a new sense of danger accompanies proximity and overshadows many of the nurturing aspects of intimacy, especially in communities of color.

So she renders tender, interpersonal moments in charcoal on stretched and dyed paper, in a sprawling series of images. But what we see is not wholly pleasant. In a clever inversion, through the manipulation of paper, Alexandria taunts us with hints of the double standard that American culture has established for mass gatherings, based on race, and the violent denial of safe assembly that it applies narrowly to people of color.