Lex Brown

Lex Brown: Carnelian

Aug 27 - Oct 17

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts

12625 SW Crescent St, Beaverton, OR 97005

Wed – Sat: 12:00 - 6:00 PM

About the Project

Lex Brown (Rome, IT) utilizes video and performance to interrogate the absurdities of late capitalism. For the 2026 C45 Triennial, she presents Carnelian, an expansive installation of paintings and video at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts. Conceived as a feature-length musical, the video follows three elemental archetypes—representing fire, air, and earth—as they navigate a sensory deluge of media while awaiting an impending disaster. Through a sophisticated blend of poetic satire and original music, the project investigates a contemporary world defined by "emergency overload," polarizing rhetoric, and the existential threat of extinction.

Artist Bio

Brown is a multidisciplinary artist, librettist, and production designer whose practice critically analyzes mass media and contemporary consciousness. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at renowned institutions, including the New Museum, The Kitchen, The High Line, the International Center of Photography, and Recess (New York); the Hammer Museum, REDCAT Theater, and the M.I.T. List Visual Arts Center (Los Angeles); the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.); The Baltimore Museum of Art; and the Munch Museum (Oslo, Norway).

Her expansive career is backed by prestigious recognition, including a Creative Capital Award, a Rome Prize Fellowship, and a United States Artists Fellowship. Her first short opera, Tati (composed by Kyle Brenn), premiered as part of the Washington National Opera’s season at the Kennedy Center. A prolific author and lyricist, Brown penned My Wet Hot Drone Summer, a sci-fi erotic novella addressing surveillance and social justice published by Badlands Unlimited. A comprehensive survey of her eight-year practice, Consciousness, was published by GenderFail; containing documentation from 46 different videos and 33 original song lyrics, the volume has been acquired by the permanent collections of the Met, MoMA, the Whitney, and SFMoMA. Brown holds an MFA from Yale University and a BA from Princeton University, and she has taught in the visual arts and theater departments at both Princeton and Harvard University.