Sway by Alexandra Beaumont

Opening reception: Saturday, July 25, 2026, 6 - 9 PM

Exhibitions run July 25 - August 30, 2026

Sway is a solo exhibition by Minneapolis-based textile artist and dancer Alexandra Beaumont that celebrates movement as a powerful force for building community and solidarity. Her textile work focuses on collective movement, social dance, and gathering to reclaim the present through the body, with each stitch and layer reflecting expressions of collective power found in stepping in time together.

Drawing from her personal experience with line dancing and her heritage as the daughter of musicians, Beaumont's pieces explore the tension of unified bodies moving within structured grids while inviting flourishes of color and swirl. Her practice features large-scale cloth banners—often centering painted, embroidered, and beaded silhouettes of friends and neighbors on sheer cloths—that capture the visual and kinetic joy of the dance floor.

The exhibition uses dance as an allegory for community and mutuality, demonstrating how moving together can be a form of organizing and a means of resistance against forces of isolation. Using materials like dyed silks, sequins, and beads, the works move with the currents of circulating viewers. Sway is an invitation to explore the expansive beauty and power of stepping in rhythm, actualizing collective power, ancestral wisdom, and joy.

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Alexandra Beaumont is a Minneapolis-based textile artist and dancer. Born and raised in South Carolina to a Jamaican father and American mother (both working musicians), she attended the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities before studying at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. Her recent solo exhibitions include “The Choreography” (Rochester Art Center, 2026), “Boots on the Ground” (St. Catherine University, 2026), and “Techniques for Ecstasy” (St. Olaf College, 2025). She is a recognized grantee, including the 2024 Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Individuals Grant, the 2023 Forecast Early Career Project grant, and the 2022 Metropolitan Regional Arts Council “Next Step Fund” grant.