Reflections on building a practice of artmaking for connection and liberation with Candy Alexandra

In Reflections on building a practice of artmaking for connection and liberation, multidisciplinary visual artist and trauma-informed art educator, Candy Alexandra González ’14 (They/Them), will share their experience with cultivating a practice that fosters both self-connection and community connection.

Candy Alexandra creates work in the spirit of Professor Brené Brown’s iconic Ted Talk titled The Power of Vulnerability, where Brown declares that “courage can be defined as a person’s ability to tell their story with their whole heart.” Currently, their altar installations center stories of body shame, fat phobia and self-reconciliation. In a society where anti-fat bias is pervasive, Candy Alexandra’s poetic and visual art practice serves as a space to share their lived experiences courageously. Their courage is fueled by the work of fat liberationists such as Laura Aguilar and Roxane Gay, whose work gave Candy Alexandra the permission to create art that centers fat, brown, queer bodies.

Inspired by the community healing Candy Alexandra has experienced both in fat liberationist spaces and QPOC spaces, Candy Alexandra facilitated a series of pulp painting workshops as an artist-in-residence at Mount Holyoke that were grounded in community healing. The artwork created both by workshop participants and Candy Alexandra explore the following questions: How do you define community? Who lifts you up and how do they lift you up? How do you want to show up in community?

This artist talk will also offer reflections on the residency and the resulting series of installations on view at Mount Holyoke College Botanic Garden.

The opening reception for the work created at Mount Holyoke will take place in the Talcott Greenhouse, immediately after the conclusion of the artist’s talk.