Multidisciplinary Artist
bio
Lex Marie (b. 1992: Prince Georges County, MD) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses paintings, sculptures, and installations that delve into personal experiences while resonating with the broader African diaspora. Her art critically engages with themes such as adultification biases, food insecurity, and systemic issues within American school systems, as vividly explored in her 2022 solo exhibition “Let Them Kids Be Kids” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington. Marie’s work has been featured in several notable group exhibitions, including “REVISIT/REIMAGINE” at Banneker-Douglas Museum (2024) “Stories From My Childhood” at the NIU Art Museum (2022), the Cumberland Valley Juried Exhibition at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts (2022), and “Future Places” at the Susquehanna Art Museum (2022). She has participated in residencies at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington (2021-2023) and Artist Mother Studio x Red Dirt (2020), and has received numerous awards and grants, including the S&R Evermay Washington Award (2023) and the District of Columbia Arts and Humanities Art Bank Grant (2023 and 2024).
Through her innovative use of everyday and reclaimed materials, Marie transcends traditional artistic boundaries, creating pieces that challenge societal norms and foster dialogue. Her vibrant and imaginative works, which often include relatable themes, aim to engage younger audiences and empower marginalized communities. By reimagining the ordinary as extraordinary, Marie’s art serves as a catalyst for empathy, understanding, and positive change.
When do you first remember being creative, and what first drew you to it?
When I was in high school, I took every art class the school offered, photography, sculpture, and painting. I’m honestly not even sure how they allowed me to take that many, but that’s where I spent most of my time. Art class became the space where I first felt comfortable experimenting, making things, and thinking creatively.
How did you pick your medium?
I enjoy working across many different mediums, and I’m not convinced that will ever change. Each idea I’m exploring tends to call for something different, whether that’s sculpture, textiles, installation, or painting. I’m more interested in following the material or form that best communicates the concept rather than limiting myself to a single medium.
Is there anyone you would like to thank?
My mom, sisters, Dominique Clayton, Ian Callender, Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, S and R Everymay and MrNiceArt, all of my collectors and anyone who has supported my work or myself over the years.
“Labels like disruptive or defiant, along with the hidden curriculum within schools, reveal how authority and control are learned across both institutional and domestic spaces.”
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What questions or ideas are you most interested in exploring right now?
Right now I am interested in examining how systems shape the identities and futures of children, particularly Black children. My recent research looks at school archives, disciplinary records, report cards, and historical policies alongside practices of discipline in the home. I am thinking about how language, expectations, and behavioral codes begin conditioning children early on. Labels like disruptive or defiant, along with the hidden curriculum within schools, reveal how authority and control are learned across both institutional and domestic spaces. Through this work, I am exploring how these forms of discipline shape belief, belonging, and the ways children come to understand their place within larger systems.
What are you currently working on or thinking about next?
I am currently continuing to develop my belt series, a body of work that examines discipline in the home and the complicated role it plays within many Black childhoods. The belt is a familiar object that carries layered meanings, representing care, protection, survival, and generational patterns of discipline, while also holding memory and control. By transforming belts into sculptural forms, I recontextualize the object and invite reflection on how these experiences shape identity and relationships to authority. As I continue my MFA at American University, I am expanding this series while thinking more deeply about how domestic discipline connects to the larger systems children encounter in schools and society.
How has your practice evolved over the years?
My practice originally began with painting, often focusing on portraits of myself and my son when he was younger. As he grew older and entered the public school system, I began to confront different realities tied to raising a Black boy in America. Experiences he was having, along with things I was noticing within schools and other systems, started to shift the questions I was asking in my work.
Over time my medium began to change. I realized I didn’t always need to rely on faces or portraiture to talk about serious topics. Instead, I began turning to materials and objects that could carry those ideas in a different way. My practice became more sculptural and material based as I started finding the mediums that best expressed what I was feeling and observing.
