Alix Edwards

Biography

Alix Edwards is a multi-platform artist based in Cardiff, Wales. She combines photography, painting, text, installation and spoken word to give a voice primarily to dis-empowered women. Her work explores untold histories, resilience, loss and shame. "I focus on everyday ‘stories’; those which do not reach the news or history books. I began researching the fate of ‘fallen women’ in late 19th and early 20th Century Wales, with the support of Arts Council of Wales, using a mixture of site visits, photography, archival evidence and accounts which have been passed down verbally or recorded in writing. This and exploring the history of post-war Trieste in Italy has led me to further question which stories we ‘keep’ and which we ‘forget’." Alix’s work has been exhibited in England and Wales including Artcore Derby, 198 Gallery, g39, Bath Fringe, Bloomsbury Festival, AOTH, Cwtsh Gallery, Cardiff Made, Truman Brewery, Angus Hughes, Oxford House, The Laundry, The Gate, The Russian Club, Barcelona and Los Angeles. Alix has MA in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London and graduated in MA photography from Central Saint Martin's in 2016. She facilitates art and creative writing groups in the community including for Women’s Aid. In 2018 she founded Company of Words open mic and guest events, which received special mention in Saboteur Awards 2020. and has continued throughout lockdown with Girl's Night In. She also is a guest performer at events including A Mild Extravaganza, Voices on the Bridge, Habitat exhibition and Ladies of Rage. Alix lives in Cardiff with her 3 children where she is working on a novel about undocumented women disappearing in border towns and creating an on-line programme to empower women creatively. She is also a founding member of publisher Infinity Books with poets Mab Jones and Marcelle Newbold due to launch December 2021. sample of reading https://vimeo.com/433531425#

Samples

Here is a sample of poetry and one of flash fiction THE PERFECT COUPLE by Alix Edwards “I said we are perfect Apart from that I Hit you sometimes,” Hits me in the face Harder than any of your Slaps and I wonder if I Have the guts to tell Your shrink what’s really Going on as he sits and nods and jots How shrinky people do Watching me sink into the Sofa searching for time and a Rabbit-hole out. Flash Fiction: Down By The River (winner of CWC Flash Fiction Competition) DOWN BY THE RIVER by Alix Edwards When I was young, I used to swim in the river by the sugar cane fields, lie on the bank, stretch out and watch my skin dry in the burning sun. But now I stay at home all day washing endless piles of clothes, cooking rice and beans, boiling goat stew, tidying, polishing and clearing up. But today is different. It’s Día de fiesta so I pack up food in large metal pots, pour sweet lemon water into old coca-cola bottles and hide some rum in my bag. Down by the river it feels odd to be wearing a bikini not a house coat. My husband frowns with distaste. “You should be wearing a swimming costume at your age!” he scowls. Funny - he didn’t say that last night when threw my favourite dress on the floor and ripped my black lace bra. We all dive into the river. I start to float downstream. I wonder what would happen if I carried on floating without the need to squelch my toes in thick clay mud. “Yesenia!” he calls. “Mind the current.” But I don’t care. I love the feeling of weightlessness: the sudden lack of chores, good wifely behaviour and boring responsibilities. And suddenly it occurs to me that I got married by choice so now I float away by choice too, down the river through the sugarcane fields, past the slums of Ensanchez Ozama until I reach the uncharted territory of the wide, blue, open, Carribean sea. -end-

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