Alexia Smit, Lock, 2026

Rumble: The Body Entangled

A solo exhibition by Alexia Smit

Mezzanine gallery: 12.03.26 - 23.04.26

The series title “rumble” refers both to a fight and a deep vibrating pressure seeking release.  This series uses this dual metaphor to explore tensions between inner experience and the social self through images of women physically grappling with one another. I source images of wrestling women from television, archival imagery, erotica and sporting events, and I use these figures as conduits for a range of contradictory feelings associated with my own embodiment and social positioning as a woman.

These paintings revel in the muscle, force and weight of women’s bodies.  The visceral subject matter is reflected in the ferocity of my mark-making. But the paintings are ambivalent, teetering on a line between aggression and tenderness. While muscular sporting bodies convey an appealing sense of power, their dominance is easily co-opted into visual spectacle. These works examine how confusing it is to separate performance from being as a woman.  It was important for me to channel the sense of melodrama, violence and tenderness of wrestling media through the materiality of paint. The lurid colour palette hints at forms of low-brow exploitation culture but also conveys fleshy vulnerability through its hot reds and pinks.

The entangled bodies in my paintings have enabled me to consider my sense of self in relation to other women through both vulnerability and violence. The paintings are a reflection upon how I am made and remade by the other women in my social world. This mutual construction is not a neutral process but one which is imbued with power. Ultimately, my work is about holding and being held by the other. I endeavour to emphasise the humanity, relationality and emotional vulnerability of the women in my paintings without erasing questions of power from view.