Alex Leav is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She received a B.A. in History from the University of Michigan in 2019 and an M.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in 2022.
Her work offers a meditation on femininity as performance - at once polished and precarious, curated and quietly unraveling. Leav dissects the soft violence of aesthetic ideals, examining how women are conditioned to compete, contort, and commodify themselves in the name of beauty and belonging. Drawing from a wide visual archive — mid-century advertisements, social media tropes, and art historical references — she asks, how much has really changed? For Leav, the tools may be new, but the expectations remain hauntingly familiar. The algorithm replaces the apron. Branding replaces identity. Beauty is still a form of currency. In this world, femininity is endlessly aestheticized, performed, and sold.
Contact: