Multidisciplinary artist Lex Marie has gone viral on TikTok and Instagram for her artwork confronting discipline within Black households.At Lex Marie's art studio, a belt is no longer just a belt.I met the multidisciplinary artist in Washington, D.C., at the American University's Katzen Arts Center.She led me to her studio, where some belts are stretched across a canvas in meticulously organized rows and columns.Others are used as a tool.Marie dips them in paint and swings them like a brush, leaving thick, violent marks across a white canvas.Marie says each piece of work carries a story about childhood, discipline, survival and the complicated ways love can be expressed.She is building a body of work that confronts a topic many families know well but rarely discuss openly: corporal punishment in Black households."I'm critiquing discipline in Black households specifically," Marie says.
"But I'm trying to tackle the history behind discipline in black households, behind spankings and whippings, and speak to the difference in how millennials are raising their children as well."The work is personal for her.Marie is 33 and the mother of an eight-year-old boy.
As her son continues to grow, she says the questions that shape her art often come directly from her parenting."Through motherhood, I'm starting to think about my own childhood, and I'm comparing and contrasting it.So some of these works are just speaking from my experiences with spankings, and they're also going from the perspective of how I feel."One of the larger works in the series is called "Watch Your Tone." The six-by-six-foot piece is composed entirely of belts — dozens of them — arranged carefully across the canvas.
They are an assortment of different shades of brown, black and pink to represent the color of flesh.The title of the piece echoes a phrase many children hear growing up: "Watch your tone when talking to me."But Marie says the belts also represent something deeper.She explains that she crea...