Alexis Weidig

Alexis Weidig, This Bride’s Fate, chair, artificial pears, ceramic basket, found objects, 4' x 6' x 4' (approximately), 2007

Alexis Weidig, in an obsessively self-conscious manner, adorns and combines found objects that signify the kitsch decor of her youth that caused Weidig to contemplate ethnographic concepts of beauty and her personal sense of identity.

Weidig's grandmother immigrated to the United States from Albania at the beginning of World War II (after the Italian invasion) and today Weidig is a practicing Albanian Orthodox. Her sculptural and installation based work is expressive of both the extremely ornate style of the ethnicity, and of the disenchantment Weidig experienced upon realizing at young age that her grandmother's (her ethnicity's) taste was considered "tacky" by American standards.

In sculptural assemblages such as This Bride's Fate one can see this complex amalgamation of emotions and cultural signs passionately combined. The way that opulence is synthesized using low-brow, mass produced items personifies a grasping for dignity. The hyperbole and explosive decorative elements of this sculptural work, as well as others by Weidig, address the emotionally heightened nostalgia Weidig feels towards these objects which both reflect her own childhood and poignantly remind Weidig of her grandmother's past.

Project 4 will be taking sculptural works by Alexis Weidig to SCOPE NY this year.