Artist Alexandra Lechin’s practice explores her own anxiety and acts as a form of soothing during times of emotional unrest.
Alexandra Lechin is a Venezuelan-American multidimensional, multimedia artist. Her work focuses on anxiety and how her practice can pacify, transform, and become an emotional energy source, creating moments of internal reflection through wonder and play. Repetition, routine, and ritual are major elements of her practice. Each piece is her instinctual response to self-soothe during times of emotional unrest.
“I have lived with anxiety and get panic attacks that take over like a tidal wave, and the isolation of the pandemic intensified these episodes. But my art is my outlet. The video performance in Panic Attack is a representation of my experience during a panic attack. The video expresses the rising and falling of my chest with the sound of my breath fighting the panic. It brings the viewer with me as I push through.
Breath is the only constant in our lives, the only thing we have from the moment we’re born until the moment we die. It is also reflective of our state—whether you’re sad, scared, angry, making love, anxious, nervous, in pain, or laughing—the way you breathe changes. By learning how to control your breath, you can control your state. In Panic Attack, the viewer is witness to my changes in breath, and therefore my emotion.”
Lechin recently graduated from the University of Houston with a BFA in sculpture. She has work on view at the Holocaust Museum Houston through October 17, 2021 and has had work displayed at Gspot Gallery, Project Row Houses, the Blaffer Museum, and Sabine Street Studios. She is a recent recipient of a scholarship for a clay workshop at the Penland School of Craft.
Houston, TX | @vibrating_lines
