Dominique Moody’s creative journey began early in life as a child born of African-American parents in 1950s Germany. Out of this experience came her first language and the creative use of visual art to communicate her thoughts and ideas. She was diagnosed and pronounced legally blind at age 28; this altered her eyesight but not her artistic vision. A 2001 recipient of CCF’s Fellowship for Visual Artists, over the years she has had numerous group and solo exhibitions throughout the world including the California African American Museum, Japanese American National Museum, the Craft and Folk Art Museum, the International Assemblage Artists Exhibition (Berlin, Germany), National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago, Illinois) and international Assemblage Artist Award Exhibition (New York, New York).
In 2012, Moody successfully funded her current artwork called the “Nomad”, through a U.S. Artists (Hatchfund) Projects. The “Nomad” is a functional dwelling on wheels inspired by and constructed from repurposed materials, which will travel nomadically as a mobile artist in residence. It is a portrait of her personal, cultural and family life. This work is still in process. In addition, she self-published her first limited edition book, “Nomad, a journey through the Life and Art of Dominique Moody,” a retrospective of her Los Angeles body of work.
About the NOMAD
Way before we ever crossed a border as migrants, immigrants or enslaved captives or refugees we were nomadic. Living our lives in the reflection of birds in passage. Bound only by the pull of our mother earth’s cycle of seasonal change. We crossed unimagined borders seeking temporary resting places, but we knew the earth was home.
This ancestral memory has left footprints on my life before I ever had any knowledge of its roots. I have moved 45 times in my 58 years and many were done by choice, generating a tremendous sense of freedom. But in the midst of a sedentary culture this practice of mobility is not embraced. Yet being nomadic is a legacy rich in an ancestry rooted in this mobile memory and now practiced in defiance to social and economic limitations, so I will continue to express “my mobility of spirit”.
For the past forty years my nomadic migration has taken me on a path of creative exploration where I could imagine my life based on my creative dreams that are grounded by the ordinary tasks of everyday life.
Those days turned into twenty five years of dreams, seven years of planning and three years of building, giving birth to the “Nomad”, a mobile dwelling inspired by found objects and salvaged materials. Industrial made parts like washer and dryer doors transformed into portal windows, to repurposed crates and branches and patina metal. Yet, instead of being an object that is just aesthetically beautiful, the Nomad is a functional dwelling that shelters me, as well as reflect a portrait of my life. As a storytelling vehicle, that will narrate the journey of my epic “nomadic” odyssey, the Nomad celebrates its past, present and future.My road ahead will take the “Nomad” into boundless possibilities of creative freedom, as I imagine encountering opportunities to create temporary artist in residencies and artworks made from objects that are found in the environment, assembling the materials and documenting the process, and then leaving the artworks in the sites where the materials were found. In time I will move on, to encounter the next place. No studio or inventory to haul, just creative freedom to imagine transforming something out of the cast off “nothings” that we leave behind in this world.
Along my journey I’m sure that we will cross paths, and in the process inspired by our encounter, we can speak to our mutual sojourns on the porch of the Nomad, a place were we can tell our stories…
Dominique Moody 2015
