Alexandria Couch

Born in Akron, USA, 1998

Lives and works in New Haven, USA

Couch conjures her figures into existence: “The Black people in my work do not exist outside of the imagination. They are strictly familiar composed of multiple references, broken down and pieced together to reconstruct being.” Executed in a sketchy, intentionally unfinished style, they remain mutable, their liminality perhaps most noticeable at their extremities: hands and feet appear to have extra digits or are repeated, as if fluttering in motion; serpentine braids sprouting from heads appear to probe the space around them like antennae. “Shapeshifting becomes the routine,” she writes. “To strip down constantly and rebuild becomes easier than wearing the same clothes. Change is comfortable. Change is necessary to live between worlds.”