Alisa Sikelianos-Carter is a mixed-media painter from upstate New York. She has been awarded residencies at Fountainhead Residency, Millay Arts, NXTHVN, Vermont Studio Center, Wassaic Project, Yaddo, Art Omi, Headlands Center for the Arts, and The Golden Foundation.
Select exhibitions include group shows at James Cohan Gallery, New York, NY; the Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; with solo exhibitions at Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL, Fridman Gallery, Beacon, NY, and the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (forthcoming October 2023). She earned her MA from SUNY Albany in Studio Art.
Sikelianos-Carter asserts that Black features are a manifestation of a sacred and divine technology that has served as a means of survival, both physically and metaphysically. She envisions a cosmically bountiful world that celebrates and pays homage to ancestral majesty, power, and aesthetics.
Inspired by traditionally Black hairstyles, Sikelianos-Carter uses web and catalog-sourced images to construct new archetypes. Through her exploration of opulent, luminescent materials she is creating a mythology that is centered on Black resistance and utilizes the body as a site of alchemy and divinity.