Alexa Meade

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Alexa Meade (born 1986), an American installation artist best known for her portraits that paint directly onto the human body and inanimate objects in a way that destroys space and makes her models appear two-dimensional when photographed.

"A snapshot of a person's painting with the true person hidden underneath" is what remains. She adopts a classical model – trompe l'oeil, the art of making a two-dimensional representational painting seem to be a painting – and does the opposite, making real life seem to be a painting.

Early life and education

Meade was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Chevy Chase, Maryland. She graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 2009, with a bachelor's degree in political science. She began working on Capitol Hill as a press assistant in Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, initially focused on a career in politics.

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Career

Meade's curiosity peaked in 2009 after an assignment in a Vassar College elective art class. Through the possibility of applying black paint on the ground, where the shadows were cast, she decided to explore space and light. She later expanded the idea by constructing a grayscale "mapping of light" with paint on the human body. She discovered that she had made the three-dimensional composition appear to be a two-dimensional painting in the process. The results of these experiments changed her perspective and encouraged her to reevaluate her career aspirations. Despite growing up surrounded by Washington, D.C.'s political tradition and initially planning to enter the field myself, Meade says, "I just felt like even though this was supposed to be my passion, it didn't quite fit with who I felt on the inside."

She honed her art in her parents' Washington, D.C. basement by painting on inanimate things, such as grapefruits, fried eggs, and sausages. She credited her lack of formal art training with her ability to come up with new ideas of surfaces to paint on, because she didn't think of painting as something that had to be done on a canvas.

Meade's living paintings went viral in March 2010, after a brief article on Jason Kottke's blog kottke.org. She appeared on CNN and elsewhere shortly after receiving extensive coverage. The next day, her website went from having negligible views to an estimated 30,000-page visitors. "Transit," Meade's older man's painting, as well as photographers photographing the Washington, D.C. metro, looking "as if a painting from the National Portrait Gallery has leapt off its wall to walk through the flesh-and-blood world. "Your Body Is My Canvas" (her address at the 2013 TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, gives a behind-the-scenes glimpse at her work and career highlights. Robert Irwin has been inspired by installation artist Robert Irwin's biography, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, as an influence on how she thinks about space.

Meade was selected to be Artist-in-Residence at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, in 2015. Meade was given free rein to pursue a period of self-directed study of theoretical and quantum physics, and in exchange, she created a joint art installation piece with the researchers. Meade's "fearlessness" was cited as a key to collaboration, according to the curator of the artist-in-residence program, "She's not one to shy away from asking questions, which resulted in a wonderful synergy between the creative and scientific thought processes."

In 2016, Meade painted dancers Jon Boogz and Lil Buck for the short film Color of Reality, produced by Animi Design. The color of truth explores a tale about gun violence and racial tensions in America, which are expressed through painting and dance. Lil Buck, a dancer, performed Memphis Jookin', which is a blend of ballet and street dancing, in a unique style of dancing. The short film was widely distributed in the media, with Gia Kourlas of the New York Times writing: "Think of it as a van Gogh, that is, if one of his paintings were brought to life as a performative exhibit"; the film was shown at Lincoln Center, the Apollo Theater, and the Hammer Museum. It received the National Civil Rights Museum's Freedom Award, and was included in the National Civil Rights Museum's Freedom Awards Ceremony.

Meade painted singer Ariana Grande on her music video "God is a Woman" in 2018. Dave Meyers, Grande's music video director, had seen Meade and Sheila Vand's film Milk: What Will You Make of Me? Vand, Meade's body painted in a tub of milk, the paint's colors dispersing and creating patterns throughout the milk) and approached both artists with the possibility of bodypainting Grande in a milky pool of paint. The piece depicts Grande, nude except for Meade's paint in shades of lavender, blue, and white, floating in a pool as the colors swirl around her. "Some of the most stunning photos...striking, empowering," Allure said. Meade's painted aesthetic sparked a beauty and makeup revival, as thousands of people created tribute art in honor of Meade's painted aesthetic.

Meade's work was on display at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2010. Meade performed live at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., for the exhibit Camera-Ready Color in 2012. In 2013, she spoke at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, "Your Body is My Canvas," in which she gave a behind-the-scenes glimpse at her work and referred to the beginning of her career in detail. As part of Denim & Supply's Project Warehouse campaign in 2014, she joined musician Avicii and others. She created large-scale public art installations in Madrid, Santa Monica, and Toronto as part of the initiative. Meade created several works in Paris, France in 2015, including exhibitions at the Grand Palais and the Pinacothèque de Paris, as well as a live performance at David Lynch's nightclub Silencio. She was artist-in-residence at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, in 2015, and designed an installation piece influenced by the scientists' work. Meade joined quantum physicists and scholars in Sydney, Australia, in a Quantum Age symposium and Lecture on Peace and Security. Meade debuted in 2016 at the White House under President Barack Obama for the South by South Lawn (SXSL) festival, which showcased inventers and innovators. Meade detoured with Refinery29's 29Rooms exhibit in 2017. She also produced the film Color of Reality in 2016 with dance artists Jon Boogz and Lil Buck. The Disruptive Innovation Award was presented to Meade in 2017 by the Tribeca Film Festival, an award given to those who "inspire and inspire people to pursue innovative thinking and creative activism." In 2018, her exhibition Immersed in Wonderland in Beverly Hills attracted 40, 000 people. She served as a keynote lecturer at Stanford University during Celebration of Mind, a symposium on the intersection of math, magic, and art, from 2018-2019. Meade has also lectured at Princeton University's Computer Science Department on the topic "Painting in More Dimensions." Google Arts & Culture invited Meade to create artwork for "Faces of Frida" honoring the Mexican portrait painter's life and her legacy that is still being carried on by women today. Alexa was Artist-In-Residence at Google, where she collaborated on a project with engineers implementing Light Field technology.

Alexa Meade's art is also subjected to study and terminology development. "Meade's unique work shows that depth perception is always a brain construct, not only in art, but also in life." Our retinas are essentially flat surfaces, so our neurons must infer the third dimension from cues such as shadows, perspective lines, or object size—both in paintings and everyday life. Meade's artful use of paint alters this brain process."

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