Engaging phenomenological discussions in her painting and drawing practice, Alexandra Giannell investigates topics of identity, mass-displacement, imprisonment, genocide, and afterlife. Interrogating systemic structures that restrict and reshape the body, vision, and perception, Giannell’s works often operate as deep and expansive fields recording time, labor, and physicality, utilizing haptic mark-making processes to interweave elements of presence and absence within the language of abstraction. 

 

Giannell has been an Artist in Residence with the Marek Maria Pienkowski Foundation in Poland researching the Holocaust as well as the inaugural Artist in Residence with the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project teaching in men's prisons. Her work has received multiple awards, including the Florita Eichel Memorial Purchase Award from the Evansville Museum of Art, History + Sciences in Evansville, IN and the Foy Gilmore Goodwyn Memorial Award from the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Montgomery, AL. Giannell's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent solo shows with the Museum of Art in Orem, UT as well as Lyon College in Batesville, AR.

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Currently an Assistant Professor of Painting + Drawing  at Utah Valley University, Giannell formerly taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Indiana University and Auburn University, as well as part-time with University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she was also the Department Gallery Coordinator. Giannell holds a diploma in Visual Arts from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, a BFA in Painting with a minor in Art History from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and a MFA in Painting from Clemson University.  

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