Michelle Alexander is a Canadian-born artist living and working between Montreal and Chicago. Her work is about the body’s response in trying to find a rational way through the irrational. Grappling with experiences of the flesh and the discomfort of fitting into one’s skin, her work addresses tension. It is about the surface and associations without guidance on how to convey meaning or reveal what’s hidden underneath.
Michelle is unpacking a crumbling self-image and loss of personal value, trying to expel a stain from within and leave a physical impression in the space. She attempts to make visible the unseen. It is an experiential confrontation of what has been endured. She manipulates and melts images as a way of using the hands to reclaim the narrative. She takes away the precision of the images and materials themselves, devaluing them to inform the meaning. She realizes the manner in which the work is created is intertwined with the imagery produced. She sees and uses the materials as a body, as the skin, as the connections between our insider and outsider worlds. She processes through process. She fights the self, being confined by the body, being stuck in it. She remains stuck with the friction of what happened. She has objects and materials clashing up against each other. She explores what was lost and what has been left behind. She creates a space for a viewer to see themselves and be seen. Through the work, questions are asked but answers are not given.
Name: Michelle Alexander
Birthplace: Montreal, Canada
Métier: Multidisciplinary artist and curator working between sculpture, installation, and the body.
Sources of inspiration:
The body and everything it carries. Its endurance, its contradictions, the quiet strength that lives beneath the surface. I am pulled toward materials that have memory, that have held or touched someone: garments, hair, silicone, cast forms, objects that still carry residue. I chase the trace of a moment, what stays behind after presence leaves. I am interested in what the body remembers and what it tries to forget.
Sources of motivation:
The need to translate what I feel but can’t say. Making helps me make sense of pressure, vulnerability, and beauty in discomfort.
What makes you happy:
When something in the studio surprises me. When materials fail beautifully. Long walks to clear my mind and spark new ideas, my friends, small gestures of care, and slow mornings with matcha and Pilates.
Reads that feed you:
Vogue, old fashion archives, and image-heavy books that feel like worlds you can step into. The visual language feeds me more than text right now. I like to get lost in color, texture, and styling rather than narrative.
Favorite tunes:
Fleetwood Mac, always.
Favorite foods:
French fries. Always a simple pleasure.
Favorite ways to unwind:
Listening to a podcast while walking by the lake. Organizing my studio or home. Moving my body without thinking too much, a Pilates class and a mindless TV show with a glass of wine at the end of the day.
Favorite part of living in Chicago and Montreal:
Chicago has this raw, self-made energy, artists building things from nothing. Montreal feels like breath and memory, layered and familiar. Moving between the two gives me both grounding and momentum.
Favorite place to travel to:
Vermont. I feel like I can actually breathe there.
Travel tips:
Walk everywhere. Let yourself get lost. Collect textures and memories instead of things.
What gets you in a working flow:
Touching materials, sewing, cutting, layering. Repetition quiets my thoughts until something begins to take shape or diving in and being impulsive.
What are you working on now:
A new iteration of my Invisible Pressure series and a sculptural project about inherited trauma, how we carry what isn’t ours but somehow take it on all the same.
Favorite motto / quote:
“I’ve always had a fascination with the body. It is where the mind resides and where emotions are felt. It is my only tool and my only subject.” — Louise Bourgeois
