Alix Marie’s latest project sits somewhere between collage, fresco and tableau vivant; ADA is an installation made up of photographs printed on fabric and red velvet. The project was launched in 2025 alonsgide ANA and is being developed gradually, like a play, with new “scenes” being created according to the exhibition spaces. ADA is rooted in the history and stories of the pregnant body.
Each scene in the project reflects the themes of fertility, protection and self-generation, weaving together mythological and intimate narratives inspired by conversations with close friends of the artist about their first pregnancies. Red velvet, evocative of menstrual blood, childbirth, miscarriage and theatre, becomes both material and metaphor.
Inspired by the Amazons of Greek mythology and their legacy in Monique Wittig's Les Guérillères, as well as one of the oldest representations of the mother goddess at the archaeological site of Catalhoyuk, all the bodies photographed in ADA are pregnant women at different stages of their pregnancies.
During her research on this common metamorphosis, the oxymoron of an experience that is both ordinary and extraordinary came up repeatedly. This is reflected in the work in the sense that all the photographs are symbols present in multiple cultures and easily accessible (such as the pomegranate or the hen's egg) but which are transformed into a dreamlike world imbued with surrealism.
ANA & ADA were commissioned in 2025 and shown across two venues; ANA at Ka, Ankara and ADA Çatı, Izmir in collaboration with Ka and supported by Institut Français de Turquie.
