From "Art on the Streets" to "God is a Woman": Spotlighting Alexa Meade

In one of my previous blog posts, "Makeup as art", I briefly mentioned Alexa Meade.  In that post, I mainly focused on her bodypaint, but she actually is more well-known as an installation artist and known for her public intervention projects.


Her public intervention projects and installations are still an extension of her bodypaint works, though.  As seen in the photos, Meade paints her models and documents the interaction between the models and others.  Her work can be found both on the streets and in galleries.

The style of her work is basically the opposite of "trompe l'oeil" (the art of making two-dimensional paintings seem like a real, three-dimensional space).  She takes an object from real life and makes them seem like a painting.  She's actually never received formal art training, and she credits lack of formal training for allowing her to come up with unique ideas of surfaces she could paint on.  Her artistic journey started when she took an elective art course in Vassar College--she decided to explore the relationship between space and light by putting black paint on where shadows were cast.  She later expanded that idea by creating a grayscale "mapping of light" on the human body; in doing so, she realized she had made a three-dimensional form seem two-dimensional.

If you've watched Ariana Grande's "God is a Woman" music video, then you've definitely seen Alexa Meade's work--because she's the artist who did Ari's body paint!  She also designed and created most of the sets in that music video.  My brother actually got to meet her at a summer program in Stanford this year.  It was a few months after the music video released, and she was in the process of preparing for two exhibitions and a bunch of projects.  According to my brother, Meade wanted to paint Ari's face, too, but Ari wanted her facepaint to be on the minimal side.

Meade's TED talk:

Your body is my canvas

Rethinking the boundaries of painting & photography

More than meets the eye 

Color of reality: Painting & Movement artistry

Below are some of my favorite works from her:

 

I highly encourage y'all to check out her website or search her up on Youtube because it's super interesting to see how she created these artworks and how people interact with them (I even hyperlinked the search results for you so GO CHECK OUT THE CLIPS).  You can also follow her on Instagram at @alexameadeart.

With love,

Emily