Christina A. West

Since 2019 I have exclusively worked with the male body as a subject in my studio practice. Exhausted by the inward, self-reflexive gaze that the “male” (patriarchal) gaze ingrained in me as a cis-gender woman, I began focusing on my outward gaze, or that which I desire and am curious about. I represent the male body in sculpture, video, and photography to visualize a feminist perspective that counters centuries of images that depict the male body as a caricatured representation of power, strength, and heroism. Focusing on what I find compelling about my subjects while directing them in the studio, my gaze homes in on each individual’s clumsiness, insecurity, and limitations of endurance, blending that vulnerability and awkwardness with beauty and strength to convey a complexity of embodied experience that all people can relate to. My most recent body of work, titled Strut, includes performative ceramic sculptures that function as armatures to support models as they pose, referencing the stumps and struts common to classical sculpture. Rather than mimicking marble, however, theses ceramic sculptures are modeled and glazed to suggest the visceral. They remind us of the unruly corporeality of our bodies, which is a stark contrast to the perfect, sanitized quality of marble representations. Additionally, the sculpture becomes a way to direct the model’s body into awkward, inventive positions, presenting moments of heightened vulnerability. The implied softness and fragility of the clay combined with the resulting body contortions that the forms engender, offer a counterpoint to the rigid strength and authoritative poses commonly represented in classical sculpture, offering a more nuanced, intimate relationship with the subject.

Christina A. West is an artist whose practice is rooted in politics of the gaze, using sculpture, video, and photography to focus on the male body. West earned her MFA from Alfred University (Alfred, NY) in 2006 and BFA from Siena Heights University (Adrian, MI) in 2003. After living in Atlanta for thirteen years where she taught at Georgia State University, West relocated back to the Midwest in 2022 where she is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has extensively exhibited her work across the country in venues such as the Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), The Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse), Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (Buffalo), the American Museum of Ceramic Art (Pomona, CA), and Atlanta Contemporary. Her work has been supported by grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Virginia Groot Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, and she has participated in residencies at The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, The Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, The Vermont Studio Center, The Clay Studio of Philadelphia, and the Center for Contemporary Ceramics at Cal State Long Beach.