Christina A. West: Staring at the Son

Christina A. West is a mixed-media artist whose works often reference classical art and academic traditions of studying the model. We have invited her to adapt pieces from her Mere Mortals series (constructed wooden stages with wheels, plaster body fragments, plastic straps, and weights) and other recent photographs and sculptures to engage artworks in our permanent collection.

She has written, "My most recent installations explore the female gaze on the male body as a way to empower and understand this underrepresented perspective. These works include video made during multiple sessions with male models as I directed them to perform a range of activities that convey vulnerability with strength and beauty with awkwardness."

Using gallery walls, platforms, and pedestals, West will link her own images and objects to photographic portraits by Cal Kowal, Guy Mendes, and Laurel Nakadate, and carved religious figures including a pieta and head of Christ, to name a few of her selections. The groupings, with their various shifts of scale, media, and points of view, will create a meditation on being and becoming, looking and being looked at.

West has exhibited her work at institutions including the Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta, Georgia), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, New York), Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (Buffalo, New York), the Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), and Plug Projects (Kansas City, Missouri). She received a BFA from Siena Heights University and an MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University; and she is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Image: Christina A. West, Napoleon, 2021, sawhorse, 2x4's, plaster, life-cassts, foam.