Community-Based Project Opening at The Eastern Star Gallery

Alexandra Grant: Antigone is you is me
Opens Thursday, February 2
Eastern Star Gallery at The Archer School for Girls
The Eastern Star Gallery is pleased to present Antigone is you is me, a participatory project with artist Alexandra Grant. Antigone is you is me is a text written by Grant and her sister Florence Grant that captures the ancient Greek myth Antigone in a contemporary scene. The part-poetry, part-dialogue, part-literary text imagines Antigone and her sister Ismene as two teenagers in Los Angeles. The exhibition is a community-based project that involves the entire Archer community to participate in illustrating this text. Students, teachers, and faculty will read the text as well as contemplate the Post-it notes containing keywords from the text in order to begin their drawing. A participant’s drawing experience, while limitless, is challenged to work with other artists around them and learn how to have each work flows into the other. Finally, every person who participates in the making of Antigone is you is me will be named alphabetically in the final presentation of the piece on Thursday, February 2. This is a place of hospitality, creativity, and experimentation.

The driving quote for this project is from the original story of Antigone: “I was born to love not to hate.”

The Eastern Star Gallery is a unique art exhibition space located on the campus of The Archer School for Girls, an independent middle and high school in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. On Thursday, February 2, Archer will host a public gallery opening and reception for the artist. 

About the Artist

Alexandra Grant is a text-based artist who uses language and networks of words as the basis for her work in painting, drawing, and sculpture. She has been the subject of shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), the Contemporary Museum (Baltimore), and galleries in the US and abroad. Grant has explored ideas of translation, identity, and dis/location not only in drawings, painting, and sculpture, but also in conversation with other artists and writers, such as her long-term collaborator, hypertext author Michael Joyce, actor Keanu Reeves, artist Channing Hansen, and the philosopher Hélène Cixous. Grant maps language in different media from intricate wire filigree sculptures to large scale drawing/paintings on paper. She investigates translation not only from language to language, but also from text to image, spoken language to written word, and representations in two dimensions to three-dimensional objects. Some of the basic queries that fuel her work are: How do we “read” and “write” images? How does language place us? What is the role of the hand in a world dominated by electronic communication?

To learn more about Alexandra Grant and her work, please visit her website: https://alexandragrant.com/

Please feel free to post about this event via social media with the hashtag: #antigoneisyouisme
The Archer School for Girls admits students of any race, color, religion, national and ethnic origin, sexual orientation or other legally protected status to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national and ethnic origin, sexual orientation or other legally protected status in its hiring or in the administration of its educational policies and programs, admissions policies, financial aid programs or other school-administered programs. 

The Archer School for Girls’ mission is to educate students in an environment specifically designed for girls. As such, the school will consider any candidate for admission who identifies as a girl. Once admitted to Archer, all students in good academic standing who abide by Archer’s code of conduct and who meet requirements for graduation will be eligible to receive an Archer diploma, regardless of any change in sexual identity or other legally protected status.