FAMOUS ARTISTAlexandra Sand
“Art is the courage to exhibit the ongoing transformation of social, emotional, and personal assets.”
Alexandra Sand
Alexandra Sand is a complex visual artist who works with performing arts and staged photography. She creates and describes her actions through charcoal drawings, a technique that allows the audience to perceive the honesty of her thoughts and emotions in the entire creative process. Egg tempera painting, video creation, or traditional photography with pinhole cameras are the means and techniques by which Alexandra Sand finds the best ways to adapt her creative process and generate a free relationship by which she interacts with the public.
EDUCATION
Master degree: Graphics Art – UNARTE – Bucharest, Romania
Bachelor degree: Graphics Art – UNARTE – Bucharest, Romania
Accademia di Belle Arti – Book Illustration and Cinema history – Bologna, Italy
PRIZES
2015 – 2016
Prix de Rome, Villa Medici – Rome, Italy
1997 – 2009
received more than 100 prizes and medals at different international painting and drawing contests in countries as Japan, India, China, Russia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, France, USA, etc
SOLO SHOWS
2020
“Sujet de l’anunciación”, Centrul Cultural UNESCO, Slobozia, Romania
2019
”Another Self”, Galerie Herve Bize, Nancy, France
2018
”Generation/Germination”, Centrul Cultural UNESCO, Slobozia, Romania
2014
”That’s thirty minutes away. I’ll be there in ten!”, VAC – Visual Art Center, part of “White Night of the Galleries / NAG” – Bucharest, Romania
GROUP SHOWS
2019
”Gesture toward solitude”, Halucinarium, Bucharest Romania
2017
“The next future’-ArtCub”, Bucharest, Romania
2016
“VivaVilla!”, Palais Royal, Paris, France
“Teatro delle Esposizione”, Villa Medici, French Academy in Rome – Rome, Italy
“Sopra Sotto disequilibri della visione”, Spazio Cesare da Sesto, Italy
“Spazi Aperti”, Romanian Academy in Rome – Rome, Italy
2014
“Dispositions in Time and Space”, Exhibition generated by the “Mobile Biennale, ClubElectroputere”, MNAC National Contemporary Art Museum, Bucharest, Romania
“Performance Platform”, Video Programme – Labirynt Gallery, Lublin, Poland
“StartPoint Prize Romania”, Victoria Art Center, Bucharest, Romania
2013
“Nucleu 0001”, Combinatul Fondului Plastic, Bucharest, Romania
“Schimbul 1, Schimbul 2 și Tura de Noapte”, Platforma – Anexa MNAC National Contemporary Art Museum, Bucharest, Romania
2012
Palais Royal – UNESCO Andorra, Paris, France
PERFORMANCE
2021
“Lespugue”, opening intervention for “La Nuit des idees 2021”, Institute Francaise de Bucharest
2020
“Etudes deVermillion”, Musee des BeauxArts Nancy, FR
2019
“Impasoto (follow up)”, Halucinarium, Bucharest Romania
2018
“Les Échos”, Lausanne – Fondation Michalski, France, Switzerland
2017
“#UnRepor table”, Visual Erotica – Street Delivery, Bucharest, Romania
“Toast us up”, Indian University, Bloomington – IN, USA.2017 – The Orange Peelers, The Fuller Project, Bloomington – IN, USA
2016
Untitled (Still Life II) & Untitled (Disney), Demanio Marittimo km. 278 Festival, Marzocca, Italy
Untitled (l’autre), Villa Medici, French Academy in Rome – Rome, Italy
”I love you as food loves salt”, collaboration with Chris Behr, American Academy in Rome -Rome, Italy
2015
“Untitled (XXIV)”, 24 hours performance in Museo Casa Mollino,Turin, Italy
2014
“The last wave’ – ’25 document exhibition”, Atelier 030202, Bucharest, Romania
“La combinacion mundial”, MNAC – Bucharest, Romania
“Keep it real”, performance in public space, Romanescu Park – Craiova, Romania
“Plan B”, VAC – Visual Art Center, Bucharest, Romania
“4 + 1”, UNAgaleria, Bucharest, Romania
“Touching itself touching”, February Guest Room in‘Q.E.D’exhibition by Mircea Cantor, MNAC National Contemporary Art Museum, Bucharest, Romania
2013
- “Touching itself touching”, Platforma – Anexa MNAC National Contemporary Art Museum, Bucharest, Romania
RESIDENCIES
2019
UNESCO Art Camp Malta – Gozo, Malta
2018
Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome – Rome, Italy
2017
Visiting teacher at Indiana University, teaching performance art and relational aesthetics ‘Performance art as daily life” – Bloomington, IN, USA
2015 – 2016
Villa Medici – The French Academy in Rome, Rome – Italy
2013
Plan B Gallery -The Paint Brush Factory Cluj, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
“Tsarino Foundation – Artists in Residence” http:// www.tsarino.org, Tsarino – Bulgaria
“Cinema da Mare Film Festival”, with stops in: Reggio Calabria, Nova Siri, Maratea, San Benedetto,Venice Film Festival – Italy
2011
UNESCO Andorra – Andorra de la Vella, Andorra
BIENNALES
2018
Bombay Beach Biennale, Salton Sea – California, USA
2017
Bombay Beach Biennale, Salton Sea – California, USA
2014
The Mobile Biennale, Club Electroputere – Romania
CONFERENCES
2019
“Performance art and its frame of reference”, Beaux-Arts ENSAD Nancy – Nancy, France
2017
“51zero festival”, Rochester, UK
2016
Conference at the Cinema of Villa Medici, together with Fulvio Ferrari, the director of the Museum “Casa Mollino – Torino”, on Carlo Mollino’s work and the performance “Untitled (XXIV) done in the space of the Museum – Rome, Italy
WORKSHOPS
2019
L’art performance et les dynamiques de la présence: la production et la signature de la présence – workshop, Beaux Arts ENSAD Nancy, Nancy, France
2017
“Performance art as daily life”, a one-semester course at Indiana University.
“Square that pink! Pink it up”, the choreography of a public performance at the “Eskenazi Museum of Art”’ Indiana University, Bloomington – IN, USA
2013
“From Object to Behavior: Process and Context in Contemporary Art”, host by Harmen de Hoop (NL) and Tudor Bratu (RO/NL), Atelier 35, Bucharest, Romania
2012
“Moving Image”, host by Radu Igazsag, U.N.A.T.C. Universitatea Nationala de Arta Teatrala si Cinematografica, Bucharest, Romania
PROJECTS
2017 – 2018
“La Construction’ by Perrine Le Querrec and drawings by Alexandra Sand”, collection book – Paris / Lausanne – Fondation Michalski, France, Switzerland
2016
“I love you as food loves salt”, American Academy in Rome and French Academy in Rome, 3 months relational project based on the relation between food and love – Rome, Italy
2013
“Visible and Invisible”, Volum Art Association – Bucharest, Romania
Videos
“Impasto”, 2018
Made by Alexandra Sand
Location: American Academy in Rome, Italy
Video chapters frames with internal metamorphosis and the three stages of being:
- Engaging (state of existence)
- Transitioning (state of becoming)
- Transforming (state of arrival)
“I loved the process of the video ‘Impasto’, done during my stay at the American Academy in Rome, Italy. I loved the process of creating it, the emotions that were generated during the action, for me as well as for the public. The video is a one-shot representation of the performance in which I merge my body with soft bread dough, covering myself with it and disappearing, only to emerge through the dough again. It symbolizes the passing of the time, a stage of transformation and metamorphosis of the artist’s body as well as its deconstruction and disparities.” – Alexandra Sand
“La Mia Memoria, Il Tuo Ringraziamento”, 2018
Made by Alexandra Sand
Location: Los Angeles, CA
black and white digital video 3’08’’
“La Mia Memoria, Il Tuo Ringraziamento” is a representation of the life cycle. We are born and we grow, we nourish! Bread nourishes, it is food for everyone and has been down the centuries, in every culture. It does not differentiate by social status or geography, for it is the common denominator that feeds every nation. The video’s action then creates a clear fusion between the body and bread, the ancestral link between the elements: Birth-Body-Bread.
Featured Works
“Etudes de Vermillion” by Alexandra Sand
Location: Musée des Beaux-arts de Nancy, 2020
“Etudes de Vermillion is a 3h long performance art piece, specially created for the museum’s space. Through this site-specific action, I wanted to create a fusion between the painting “La Femme à la puce” by the incredible Georges de La Tour, to decompose the light of his paintings and to create a bond with the public and me, the artist. I metamorphose my body into a tool of creating a passage to a meditative state of mind. In our today’s society where we are in a constant frenzy to cancel the thought of a poetic and simple moment, in a world in which we are taught and told what and how to feel, I wanted to invite the public to be part of an experience, from the first entrance to the museum to the exit of the space. All the itinerary is built like a storyboard, from the frontal lights to the revealing of the museum works in the dark, from the permanent trace of the drawings “Untitled (Etudes de Vermillion)” to the representation of a raw “cutout” of a red and vermillion study. The public passed through different gates that were specially created for them, in order to arrive at the final stage of the experiment, the recreated portal of light, chromatics, and presence. I translate the painting “La Femme à la puce” as a decomposition of a meditation. The color composition with the light, submerges, not just my view, but my entire being. I see in this painting, a way of being held together, in spirit, as an artist, and as a human.” – Alexandra Sand
“Another Self” by Alexandra Sand
Another Self** is a singular sculpture, made of plaster and representing the cast body of the artist. The statue is an ode to “Venus of Lespugue” – a statuette of a nude female figure of the Gravettian, dated between 26,000 and 24,000 years ago. Alexandra Sand got her inspiration under the supervision and direction of Yves Coppens*. From the outset, the reference to this Venus immerses us in the dizzying history of sculpture and molding, but from an alicyclic reading of Venus, in a mirror, Alexandra Sand carries out a work of deconstruction of reality. She posits such questions as Being as much as Having, the innate as the acquired, the individual as well as the group.
* Yves Coppens is a Professor at ‘Collège de France’ – Paris, FR . In 2015-2016 he was the guiding figure of the art residents of Villa Medici in Rome. IT.
** Another Self, work in custody at the Hervè Bize Gallery in Nancy, FR.
“Selfie-ing” by Alexandra Sand
- Medium: charcoal on paper
- Dimensions: 100 cm X 70 cm
- Year: 2018
- Collection: Private Collection
- Photo credit: Alexandra Sand