Alexa Meade (born 1986) is an American installation artist best known for her portraits painted directly onto the human body and inanimate objects in a way that collapses depth and makes her models appear two-dimensional when photographed.

[4][5][6] Initially planning on a path in politics,[7] she interned for congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill, and then worked as a press assistant on Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.

[12] Meade first gained public recognition in March 2010, when her living paintings went viral following a short post about her work on Jason Kottke's blog kottke.org.

For this interdisciplinary project, Meade was given free rein to pursue a period of self-directed study of theoretical and quantum physics, and in return she created a collaborative art installation piece with the researchers.

The curator of the artist-in-residence program, cited Meade's "fearlessness" as vital to collaboration, stating "She's not one to shy away from asking questions, which created a wonderful synergy between the creative and scientific thought processes.

[20] The piece shows Grande, nude except for Meade’s paint in shades of lavender, blue and white, floating in a pool as the colors swirl around her.

Meade's painted aesthetic set off a beauty and makeup trend, as thousands of people created inspired tribute art.

The collection featured 12 foot tall colorful living portraits of New Yorkers including Tony Award-Winning actors such as J. Harrison Ghee[26] and Brian Stokes Mitchell.

[28] In 2013, she gave a speech at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, Your Body is my Canvas, in which she offered a behind the scenes look at her work and described the beginning of her career in detail.

In 2015, she was artist-in-residence at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, and created an installation piece inspired by the scientists' work.

In August, 2019, Scientific American wrote: "“Meade’s unique work illustrates that depth perception is always a brain construct, not only in art but also in life.

Because our retinas are fundamentally flat surfaces, our neurons must infer the third dimension from cues such as shadows, perspective lines or the relative sizes of objects—both in paintings and in everyday perception.