Background
Alex McQuilkin is an interdisciplinary artist whose work investigates the multitude of ways that cultural messages are internalized to influence a gendered performance of self. McQuilkin combines psychoanalysis, maudlin sentimentality, dark humor and deep sincerity in her paintings, videos, objects, and installations, through which she explores the construction of female identity in Western culture. Approaching her practice through the lens of performance and a relationship to labor that is deeply entwined with sublimated messages about gender, she explores themes such as the role of cultural aesthetics in defining female identity and the power structures embedded within artifice.
McQuilkin’s work has been exhibited internationally since 2000. She has had recent solo exhibitions at de boer, Los Angeles; Signs & Symbols, New York; Plymouth Rock, Zurich; Marvelli Gallery, New York; and Galerie Adler, Frankfurt. Group exhibitions include MoMA PS1, New York; KW Institute, Berlin; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Konig Gallery, London; Tick Tack Gallery, Antwerp; Marlborough, New York; Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville; and Sevil Dolmaci Gallery, Istanbul. McQuilkin’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, the Village Voice, FlashArt, Art Magazine and elsewhere. Her work was recently featured in the publication New York/New Wave: The Legacy of Feminist Artists in Emerging Practices by Kathy Battista and Young-Girls in Echoland: #Theorizing Tiqqun by Heather Warren-Crow.
Education
- MFA, Studio Art, New York University
- BS, Studio Art, New York University
