Alex McQuilkin combines psychoanalysis, maudlin sentimentality, dark humor, and deep sincerity in her videos, drawings, objects, and installations, through which she explores the construction of female identity in Western culture. She describes her work as “walking a really fine line, investigating the stereotyping and damning of women not directly through a male view, but as that view has been carefully woven into the social structure and internalized in women.” Best known for her videos, in which she plays the starring role, she mines teenage and Hollywood culture to reveal the destructive effects of this stereotyping. In Fucked (2000), her breakout piece, McQuilkin presents a sex-tape, of a sort. Her face tightly framed by the camera, she applies make-up while in the midst of the experience described by the video’s title, so hyper-focused on her image that she cannot let go.

Alex McQuilkin’s work has exhibited internationally since 2000. Her paintings, drawings, videos and sculptures explore themes such as the role of cultural aesthetics in defining female identity and the power structures embedded within artifice. Recent highlights include solo exhibitions in NY and Germany and group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, KW Institute in Berlin, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, and Centre Pompidou in Paris. McQuilkin’s work has been reviewed in the NY Times, the Village Voice, FlashArt, Art Magazine, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from New York University and is currently a professor of art at New York University.