Alexa Wheeler
let her rest, 2024
engraving, drawing, painting, sewing, papier collage, screws, nuts, plexiglass, transfer, thread
15x 10x2.5 inches
 
let her rest layers domestic imagery, archival figures, and the vulnerable human form within a transparent, bolted structure. A reclining body is suspended amid fragments of caregiving, childhood, and instruction, stitched and pressed into place yet never fully contained. Imagery drawn from 1950s domestic culture, including laughing children sourced from a game board promising the ‚"perfect" family, exposes the manufactured ideal of happiness and feminine fulfillment. The materials, including thread, paper, engraving, and plexiglass, suggest both repair and restraint, visibility and exposure. The work considers rest not as passivity, but as refusal, reclaiming the body as a vessel worthy of pause, care, and protection.