Alexandra Stephenson (b. 2004) is an Australian multidisciplinary artist living on the Dharug land of the Blue Mountains, practicing on Gadigal land. Her art practice involves traditional oil painting and sensory installation works of textile and sound. Through painting, she centres feminine identity as one shaped by the voices of the male storyteller, playing with medieval folkloric tales, Christianity with its roots in subjugation, and feminine identity as performance. To do this, she borrows various themes and compositions from historical theatre plays, and medieval European Christian iconography, digging into this material with the goal of understanding the storyteller, and their influence on the fashioning of female behaviour.
Her practice aims to reveal patriarchy itself as a story, one that influences our understanding of identity and presentation to the world. She highlights the assigned role we play in a tale of male dominance and feminine servitude, delving into the changing form and presentation of oppression, driven by the perpetual need to prove the feminine worth through the exploitation of self and body.
