Alexandra Bell


Alexandra Bell is an American multidisciplinary artist. Bell is best known for her series Counternarratives, large scale paste-ups of New York Times articles edited to challenge the presumption of “objectivity” in news media. Using marginalia, annotation, redaction, and revisions to layout and images, Bell exposes the pervasive racial and gender biases embedded in print news media.

Life and education

Bell was born and raised in Chicago. She cites visual artists such as Glenn Ligon, Jenny Holzer, and Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar as inspirations. Bell holds a Bachelor of Arts in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Chicago. She also received her Masters from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2013.

Work and critical reception

Bell's work has appeared in major group and solo exhibitions across the United States, including the 2019 Whitney Biennial, which featured a newly commissioned series of prints titled No Humans Involved: After Sylvia Wynter, which looks at the New York Daily News’ reporting of the Central Park Five case. Among other accolades, Bell received the 2018 International Center of Photography Infinity Award in the applied category and was a 2018 Open Society Soros Equality Fellow.

Exhibitions and installations

Solo