According to the Office for the Arts (OFA), the visual work of Council Prize in Visual Arts winner Alexandra M. Hays ’09 “addresses the critique of social customs and expectations of the West’s myopic perspective on the East, especially China.” But Hays does not entirely agree with this interpretation. Yes, Hays admits, her background as an East Asian Studies concentrator has influenced her art more than a history of working from any particular medium. “But I’m not really an artist,” she says. “I just make projects and a lot .of the time there’s something to them about Asia because that’s what I study and think about.”

Hays chooses not to comment on the body of her recent project, and says simply that the idea sparked in March 2006. Since then she has worked on her pieces in the grander scheme of pursuing one extraordinary concept. Hays focuses primarily on installation and video art, with materials that range from expansive embroidery to large Plexiglass boxes.

Installation, Hays says, emphasizes the relationship of objects to one another rather than a single object itself. This kind of art takes into consideration the space and context in which the object is situated; one example would be a sculpture in a room where the walls give meaning to the sculpture. “I like installation art because it engages the space around you, Hays says. “There’s an immediacy and a context more particular than the walls of a museum or gallery.”

Her work, which has been exhibited in Milan, New York, and China, is meant to be a long-term, holistic project. Therefore, Hays, who describes her usual artistic process as “impulsive more than anything else,” has taken a more methodical, regimented outlook on this particular set of pieces compared to her usual style. “Most of the time it’s impulsive and unplanned, and influenced by the availability of the tools around,” she says. “That’s how things result, not out of any intention or self-awareness of being an artist, but because of the immediacy and availability of the tool.”

Hays—who has worked in Harvard art museums and the Carpenter Center, helped create VES thesis films, and designed for Harvard fashion shows—is also president of The Harvard Advocate, which she joined at the end of her sophomore year. However, she says, she is more inclined toward independent projects, one of which was a 16mm film about the romance between felines and humans, a kind of diary of a cat named Oliver. She is also currently working on an installation named “Marshmallowtopias,” a performance piece about sculptures that comes to life on ice skates.

But art did not become a significant part of Hays’ life until about two years ago, although she had been interested in drawing before and throughout high school. She got into performance art because of its immediacy and the fact that, to Hays, it felt more intuitive, as if she did not need to bring a studied discipline to it. She then moved to making videos. “Performance, spectacle, kitsch, is what feels natural to me,” she says.

Her individual pieces involve “kittens and bunnies and puppies and flowers,” things that Hays says she loves and that other people oftentimes find “kitschy.” Over the past two years, she has photographed holiday cards for Easter and Christmas that feature herself surrounded by stuffed animals. “People think there’s a sort of irony about what I do,” Hays says. “It’s not considered a modern or sophisticated aesthetic, but it’s my aesthetic. People think there’s a kind of irony in the art, but I’m being completely sincere.”

Hays, who hopes to become a cat photographer after graduation, recognizes that she does not have a single distinct vision or personality and accepts that readily. “Last week I had an art show open in Italy and a next one is in New York, but my real plan is to be a professional cat photographer,” she says. “It’s okay with me that the different things I do don’t seem to agree with one another, that they don’t necessarily seem like part of some single vision. I try to have a sense of humor about what I do and in what I do.”

—Denise J. Xu