STATEMENT

My work is primarily figural, mainly anthropomorphic sculptures of non-human animals create parallels between issues that concern humanity and social justice. It’s also riddled with projections of archives, plant photography, and pottery. One constant thread is that of research and investigatory processes. I make work in order to sort through my thoughts and draw conclusions about things that perplex me. I form hypotheses, and the process of making becomes akin to conducting experiments, proving or disproving these hypotheses.

My life, thus far, has been transient. I grew up in no particular community, in five different houses, with dozens of changing neighbors. I now spend most of my year in a little town in the south of France. I’ve always loved being a little bit of everywhere, spending time in Philadelphia, then running away into the woods for a few months a year to work with kids in an intentional communities (summer camp). My family is beautiful and kind, but even still it ebbs and flows with political context, birth, death, death, DEATH, and whatever else drastically changes it (death). My brain feels like a marble in a massive hollow icosahedron* labeled “I CARE ABOUT EVERYTHING” rolling down a hill, each face of the icosahedron labeled with a different thing I care about, from justice to collective care to food as protest to mother earth to my grandma and my mom and my dad and my (dead) cat and my new alive cat, to prioritizing kindness and then humor.

That’s where I find my hypotheses. Wherever the marble hits, a seed is sown. Sometimes it passes, the marble hits elsewhere, and sometimes I have everything I need in front of me to execute it. That idea grows and possesses me and I begin my investigation. During my making, I start to process my experiences through the lens of my concept, and I keep working until I resolve my concept, and I resolve my art. 

BIO

Alice Hospitel lives in France. They were born in Uccle, Belgium, and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio at the age of six. They went to Temple University in Philadelphia and have a B.A. in Visual Studies and a B.S. in Human Development and Community Engagement, with a certificate in Community Arts Practices, and a concentration in ceramics. Their professional life has been a mod podge of teaching art and ceramics, working for summer camps, consulting for summer camps, and… retail? They’re just doing their best!