02.10.2012

Alessandra Torres

Baltimore, MD | by Rachel Sitkin

February 10, 2012

I have known Alessandra Torres for over ten years now, ever since we were undergraduates at Maryland Institute College of Art. Her piece from our 2002 commencement exhibition- a performance for which she lay naked and blindfolded inside a glass and steel adult size incubator, left a lasting impression on me.  Yet even though we have remained very friendly acquaintances over the years, it was not until fairly recently that I gained a real understanding and appreciation of her work.
Alessandra’s work still explores the human body in relation to space and as mark maker.  She frequently incorporates her own bare body, and the work could easily become merely exhibitionist or aggressively confrontational.   However, in the years since our commencement exhibition, both Alessandra and her work have become less self-conscious and more playful and now her childlike curiosity is a driving impetus to her practice.  This permeates all her work with an alluring quality rather than an antagonistic one.
I visited Alessandra at her live-in studio at The Creative Alliance as she prepared for a December exhibition at Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, MI.  She was invited to exhibit after leading a body workshop with the high school students there last January.  She was working on a series of interactive drawings that referenced the topics she had covered in the workshop: the body as a mark-making tool, physicality in making, and body memory.  The drawings were made up of cutout outlines of her arms and legs, painted on the back with magnetic paint and placed on a magnetic surface.  In this way the audience will be allowed to manipulate the drawings and choreograph the bodies through out the exhibition.  For this show she also exhibited large-scale photographs that documented a series of performances about hiding, and assembled a maze of…

Alessandra Torres Video