ALICE BLACK is proud to present Atalanta Xanthe’s (b.1996) debut solo show, Uteroverse, comprising five large-scale paintings and accompanying drawings. The Uteroverse series charts the experience of anthropomorphic sperm as they journey through the imagined landscape of the reproductive tract.

Xanthe was born in England and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Xanthe attended the University of Oxford, Ruskin School of Art, then received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2018. On graduating, she became the school’s youngest Fellow (2018-2019). Xanthe is represented by ALICE BLACK in London and is featured in the permanent collections of the Ruth Borchard Collection, UK and the Marval Collection, Italy.

Uteroverse began with Xanthe’s discovery of a half-brother, born from sperm donated by her father decades earlier. This new half sibling was the same age as Xanthe and lived three miles away from her in New York City. Processing this revelation, Xanthe was struck by the randomness, extravagance, and drama of the genetic and reproductive process. These paintings represent a homage to all the versions of ourselves that never were. 

The story of Uteroverse starts with a tree falling in Fallopia; it’s trunk divides one egg into two. From here, the paintings follow the sperm as they scale craggy outcrops of rock, hurtle through thickets, and stalk the eggs.  Xanthe, embracing painting’s vexed relationship with the literary conceit of a main character, subverts the idea of protagonist as survivor - of the 200 million sperm ejaculated, we know only one will make it. 

30 thousand years after an unknown hand created the Willendorf Venus, depictions of female sexuality typically still focus on breasts and genitals as expressive of a bountiful and generous fertility. Yet the inside story of pro-creation is stormy and perilous. Far from a passive pleasure garden, a woman’s reproductive tract is the sperm’s decimator and decider.

Xanthe’s paintings appropriate the scale and seriality of History Paintings, a genre traditionally depicting male heroism or grand events, to tell a story that is female – often invisible yet indispensable to our species.  Fusing influences from Hiroshige, Bruegel, and biological diagrams, the playful pictorial language of the work contrasts with its often macabre subject matter.  

Uteroverse is about journeys: how we are defined by the landscapes we seek to dominate, how the landscapes we move through move us. Journeys have been used as allegorical devices for all of recorded history, from the Odyssey onwards. This show is an allegory for a specific biological journey, new to painting. It is also an exploration of being in a landscape. We hope you will enjoy it as both.

Atalanta would like to thank the De Laszlo Foundation and G.Sheldrake for their support.