Alexa Black

Alexa Black is an artist of mixed Nahua, Pipil, Maya and settler heritage, creating as a guest on traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Xwməθkwəyə̓ m (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Through self-taught explorations in photography, drawing, painting and mixed media arts, Alexa found her passion deeply embedded in antiquated techniques of photography and classical illustration. Enamoured with tintype and wet plate collodion processes, she learned the foundations through a brief mentorship with Quinn Jacobsen.

Black seeks to reveal the magic of hidden realms that exist in parallel to our terrestrial and colonially defined reality. Her art is ignited by the energies of her indigenous ancestral territories, animism, and being an ally to marginalized populations. The work is built by reconnecting the seams of her fractured identities, by reclaiming and amplifying the voices of the silenced ancestors of her matrilineal blood lines. Black divines dreams and visions shrouded in haunting atmospheric aesthetics that are symbolic of life's beauty and cosmic initiations. Her work is primarily dedicated to deconstructing the disconnected and damaged societal tissue imposed by colonial standards of living.

Alexa has been a featured artist in galleries across BC and internationally in Los Angeles. Her drawings, films, and paintings have been featured in published works such as Invisible City and Discorder Magazine. Recently she was awarded a Research and Creation Project Grant by the Canada Council to produce her upcoming 78 piece innovative and intersectional tintype/mixed media collage oracle, based from a traditional tarot deck. This evolving body of work is to be featured in SEITIES analogue print publication this summer: alexablack.ca