Alexandria McAughey

Bio

Alexandria McAughey is a visual artist, born 1993, south of Detroit. She received a BFA, with honors, from the College for Creative Studies in May of 2016. Since graduating, she has exhibited locally, making Detroit her stomping grounds as an emerging artist. In 2015 Alexandria spent time in Haiti, as well as Nairobi, Kenya working with children and teachers in schools to help establish creative learning in their studies. Currently she is employed at Simone DeSousa Gallery located on West Willis Street in Detroit. As a maker, she works both conceptually controlled, as well as instinctive, and intuitively through the medium of collage and assemblage, creating immersive and chaotic wall pieces, and installation, that attempt to blur lines between the two-dimensional image, and the physical tactile object. 

Statement

I am a visual artist interested in exploring lines where the past, present, and future begin to become one. In my work, I think about how the media and technology is able to affect our experiences. I am interested in how people become disconnected from actual living, and begin to live and have experiences through a screen, whether it be a computer, phone, or television. In our society, the power of an image can be everything. But the problem with images is the possibility of them lying. I find it interesting how images are able to make such an impact, replacing actual experiences meant to be had in the present moment. The printed images in my work represent the past, captured and suspended in time. By reflecting the image of the viewer and drawing them into the work, mirrors represent the present. Living material, such as plants, and fish, represent the future, as organic material will continue to change. The plants will grow mold, and the fish will eventually die. When notions of time begin to run parallel, deciphering the real from the artificial in these works can be challenging, (just as it is at times in reality.) Dichotomies are created not only through the placement of images and materials, but as well, through the substrates that these works are created on. The historical content of the images and material begins to pretend to be what it is not. The substrates begin to become unsure of whether they want to be a one-dimensional flat surface, containing flat images, or if they want to embody the actual image itself, becoming a physical object. Images begin to act as the actual, while the actual begin to act as reproduced images of the actual. Through these pushes and pulls time becomes ambiguous, and the viewer is left to create their own realities.