Alexa Wright is a visual artist whose practice spans a range of media, including photography, video, sound, interactive installation and book works. She has worked at the intersection of art and medical science since the late-1990s, when she became known for her award-winning photographs of people with phantom limbs, ‘After Image’. Alexa often works with people with mental and physical differences to make works that address questions of human identity and otherness through qualities like vulnerability and empathy. She has been involved in several long term inter-disciplinary collaborations, for example with Alf Linney, Professor of Medical Physics and computer scientists at UCL (1999-2010) and Hybrid Bodies, a unique international, interdisciplinary project based in Toronto, Canada that brought together medics, visual artists, a philosopher and social scientists to explore the emotional and psychological effects of heart transplantation (2007-19). In 2015, funded by the Arts Council, she initiated ‘Piecing it Together’, a participatory project for people experiencing mental ill health at two NHS Mental Health Recovery Centres.
Alexa’s work has been widely shown internationally in festivals such as: FILE, SESI Art Gallery, Sao Paolo, Brazil; DaDaFest International, Liverpool, UK, International Women Artists’ Biennale, Incheon, Korea and Athens Photo Festival, Benaki Museum, Athens. Examples of solo exhibitions include: Toronto Photographers Workshop, Canada; Experimental Arts Foundation, Adelaide, Australia and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. Alexa has works in a number of public collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The Wellcome Trust and various Universities.
Alexa is a Reader in Art and Visual Culture at the University of Westminster in London. Her book, ‘Monstrosity the human monster in visual culture’ was published by IB Tauris in June 2013.