Lexa Walsh is an artist, cultural worker and experience maker.

With a background in both sculpture and social practice, Walsh makes site specific projects, exhibitions, publications and objects, using an array of materials and employing social engagement, institutional critique, and radical hospitality. She creates platforms for interaction across hierarchies, representing multiple voices and inventing new ways of belonging. Walsh has exhibited and performed internationally for over 25 years at institutions large and small, and in public spaces.

Walsh is a graduate of Portland State University’s Art & Social Practice MFA program and holds a BFA in Ceramics from California College of Arts and Crafts. She was Social Practice Artist in Residence in Portland Art Museum’s Education department, received the CEC Artslink Award, the Gunk Grant, the de Young Artist Fellowship, and Kala’s Print Public Residency Award. She has twice received Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure Award, Walsh has participated in projects, exhibitions and performances at Apexart, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Cité de la Musique, the de Young Museum, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Exploratorium, Federal Hall NYC, For-Site, Kala Art Institute, Mills College Art Museum, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Oakland Museum of California, NIAD, Portland Art Museum, SFMOMA, Smack Mellon, Shelter Gallery, Taipei Artist Village, Walker Art Center, Williams College Museum of Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Zero Art Fair. She has done several international artist residencies, tours and projects.

Walsh’s upbringing as the youngest child of fifteen, in a household of elite athletes and their trophies informs her work. Being the only bad athlete in the family led her to not only becoming a tween cheerleader, but also forming an interest in alternative lifestyles, economies and communities, practicing collectivity while coming of age in the post punk cultural scene of the 1990’s. Walsh founded the experimental music and performance venue the Heinz Afterworld Lounge, worked for many years as a curator and administrator at CESTA, an international art center in Czech republic, whose team created radical curatorial projects to foster cross-cultural understanding. Walsh co-founded and conceived of the all women, all toy instrument ensemble Toychestra. She founded and organized Oakland Stock, the Oakland branch of the Sunday Soup network micro-granting dinner series that supports artists’ projects and the Bay Area Contemporary Arts Archive (BACAA). Her most recent large-scale works include a collaborative project with progressive nuns at Grand Central Art Center and a memorial to all lost from war at The Guardhouse at Fort Mason. She recently relocated from Oakland, CA to the Hudson Valley.

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ARTIST STATEMENT

I make context-responsive, multifaceted projects, exhibitions and objects about power and value. With a background in both sculpture and social practice, I create platforms for interaction across hierarchies, representing multiple voices and inventing new ways of belonging. These works can look like a hearth for difficult conversations, an artist run service platform, or a social club for elders. As an artist-curator, I have merged prominent artworks with ephemera and fakes, and assembled community-sourced archives.

Alongside site-specific projects, I have a studio practice using ceramics, textiles, overlooked craft materials and found fashion and home accessories. I am currently appropriating traditional award forms and accompanying objects such as flags, shields and pompoms. These handmade, oversized forms take on the multiple meanings of “decoration”, critiquing the racket of war and the concepts of winning and losing. They simultaneously address grief and grasp at joy. The works have participatory components to share in an expanded notion of what and who may be celebrated, and why. “Taking One For The Team” is a large scale installation of colorful award forms with a participatory sound element, exploring our personal notions of endurance. “Consolidated Mess” is an exhibition responding to WWII museums and their tendency to celebrate war. A primary component of this exhibition a large series of ceramic and mixed media military ‘decorations’ with dedications made by not only me, but also by participating Veterans, and a corresponding exhibition I curated of Veteran artists work. “Mourning Song” takes these awards in a darker direction, as a memorial to all victims of war.

My interest in hierarchies stems from growing up in a large Catholic family, in a household of elite athletes and their trophies. I was the only bad athlete in the family, which, not only led me to tween cheerleading, but also formed my interest in alternative lifestyles, economies and communities. The combination of these influences informs my practice, and ethic of care, exuberance, and critique.

My process always involves deep research, listening, experimentation and play. Ultimately I am driven by uncovering the grey areas, the in-betweens, the nuanced space between discomfort and a warm embrace, to create physical and emotional spaces for social engagement and institutional critique.

Expanded thoughts on Social Practice:

The Table is a platform for exchange where almost anything can happen
The Community Cookbook is a platform for storytelling and recording
The collective making of Cheer and Song is a platform for expressions of joy and protest
The Museum (and its pedestal) is a platform to question power and value
The Thrift Store is a platform that asks what differentiates it from a museum
The Archive is a platform for uncovering and classifying
The Public Square is a platform for calling in
I have utilized these platforms and others to create physical and emotional spaces for social engagement and institutional critique.