Lex Marie cut up hospital baby blankets and used their stripes as the stripes of an American flag.
“I thought it would be interesting to use the stripes in that blanket as the stripes in the American flag,” she said, “to create this symbol for something that we don’t have a symbol for.”
Marie is 33, a multidisciplinary artist who grew up in Prince George’s County, Maryland. She studied painting at the University of Maryland and finishes an MFA in spring 2027. Her materials are the objects of raising a child: hospital baby blankets, leather belts, pencils, school supplies, canvas. Her son is nine. He was four at his first active shooter drill. Black women die in childbirth at three to four times the rate of white women.
The work is not an argument with other mothers.
“I’m not interested in critiquing anyone’s parenting choices,” she said. “I’m just using my art as a way to help me through parenting, really.”
People have cried in front of her at shows. “Because the work is personal to me, but I mean, it is personal to them as well,” she said.
Spike Lee bought two pieces from her Hard Head, Soft Ass series in July. Her next show opens at the Bishop Gallery in New York on Saturday, November 7.
“I felt like our stories were important enough to be in galleries, to be in museums,” she said. “I want to tell our stories.”
