Statement of Work
What is the difference between making art and trying to start a revolution?
I argue that they can be one and the same.
In objection to historic and continued abuses toward Queer peoples, I gather Queer materials and organize them into a growing arsenal of assemblages and constructions, which I call Queer Revolutionary Objects (QROs). The Queerness of the objects and materials in my works comes from my own understanding of “Queerness”. I define Queerness as an attribute that extends past the realms of sexuality and gender identity. To be Queer is to be abandoned, broken, hidden, discarded, and/or confined. Using my experience-based definition, I source Queer materials from a diverse array of origins: plywood from scrap bins, steel from bed frames, spindles from staircases, and fragments of broken mirrors, to name a few. As I work with these materials, I utilize a diverse collection of craft and trade skills, including metalworking, woodworking, sewing, and more. This wide range of skills not only enables me to incorporate a broad spectrum of materials into my work but also empowers me, as a genderqueer individual, to challenge the gendered binaries entrenched within crafts and trades.
During the Holocaust, the Nazis used a system of colored triangles to codify people they saw as inferior; Pink and Black were assigned to Queer people. Building off the work of Holocaust survivors and AIDS activists who symbolically reclaimed the Pink and Black triangles, I claim all triangles for Queer people. While using pyramids, tripods, and other triangular forms as the base structures for my QROs, I exclaim triangles to be a counterpoint to the binary. Triangles are easily recognizable despite their differences and are extremely strong, balanced, and withstanding. I see triangles as the shape that will bring forward a Queer utopia.
In the vein of bringing forward a Queer utopia, all my QROs are nomadic. All my larger works are easily assembled and disassembled, often using only a handful of bolts.
I use this design feature intentionally not only as it relates to the military-like mobilization needed for battlefield structures, but also as a reference to the Queer experience of relocating in search of acceptance, love, or to escape violence.
The titling of my works often references Queer and revolutionary histories, cultures, and aesthetics. My work P.A.F. Beacon (Assembly Required) is a reference to the Red Army Faction, a West German urban guerrilla group from the 1970s. Other works reference figures like Sappho of Lesbos and Disco hits like Boogie Wonderland.
About the Artist
Alex Rosborough Davis (They/Them/Theirs), b. 1995, is a Genderqueer artist from St. Louis, Missouri. They graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with an MFA in Visual Art in 2023. Davis earned a BA in Anthropology-Sociology and Environmental Studies from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois in 2018, where they managed a student-run bicycle shop and were heavily involved in student activism, primarily working on a labor rights campaign. Davis moved to Brookings, South Dakota in August of 2024 to serve South Dakota State University in the role of Architecture Lab Manager.
During the final stages of their BA, Davis discovered their passion for art-making after learning to weld. The following academic year, they were a Post-Baccalaureate Fellow at Knox College, where they continued to develop their art practice. Their work has earned them recognition, including the Beverly Bender Sculpture Award, the Sam Fox School Graduate Travel Stipend Award, and a Thesis Research and Production Grant from the Sam Fox School. Davis has exhibited in several exhibitions, including solo exhibitions in Illinois and Missouri, and a group exhibition at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, in St. Louis, in 2023.
As a Queer, Trans, and Nonbinary person, Davis finds themself at odds with the proliferation of anti-Queer legislation and violence. With their ever-growing competencies as a maker, they utilize their artistic voice to collect and organize Queer materials to build and defend spaces of Queer utopian potential. In this vein, they have built a library of Queer revolutionary literature, as a way to help protect Queer ideas from the contemporary calls for censorship. Davis is currently furthering their exploration into light and reflection as a medium to abstract and recontextualize the Queer club, which they see as a space of desire, mourning, and revolutionary potential.