The Artwork
AT HOME: In the LAndscape, 2024
Interactive installation and pop-up events
On view at the following locations:
Stoneview Nature Center, September 7, 2024 | 9AM – 6PM
Gloria Molina Grand Park, September 13 - 14, 2024 | 8AM – 7PM
As an assemblage artist, when Dominique Moody walks through LA, discarded objects often call out to her. Industrial salvage, shed belongings, and natural cast-offs may be considered waste by many, but to Moody find a peculiar beauty in the hidden potential usefulness residing within them. In this piece, AT HOME: In the LAndscape, Moody assembled found objects into an artwork that expresses the deeper stories of how we individually and collectively think of "HOME." "Home Dwells Within Us," is what the artist’s mom used to tell she and her siblings when they moved from place to place—reassuring them that no matter where they lived, a sense of home went with them.
The work includes reclaimed wood pallets, industrial metal vintage wheels, natural reeds, and an eclectic mix of found metal objects that form mobile silhouettes of “HOME” and create dimensional lined structures that pop up in the landscape without intruding on the view. The base of the piece reflects the diversity of LA by incorporating the word “HOME” in various languages. It is the artist’s hope that these simple structures draw people’s attention to the landscape and spark opportunities for dialogue and exchange—asking, what does "HOME" mean to them?
Dominique Moody was born in the 1950s in Germany, the sixth of nine children in an African American military family. Her first conscious memory awakened her desire to tangibly harness the power of stories; her family’s migration to the US gifted her perspective as she experienced the gravity of journeying into the unknown. While traversing the racial policies of redlined communities in Philadelphia, her family transformed neglected houses out of necessity. She found objects with each move, intuitively knowing they were manifestations of memories with unique stories to tell. Photos rarely survived the family’s journey, so Moody recreated stories through drawing, silhouette, and collage.
Although her portraiture and narrative illustration skills were refined through diverse education, she began to gradually lose central sight in her 20s, which diminished color, detail, depth of field, and facial recognition. With my ability to render traditional portraits challenged, Moody experimented with assemblage art forms that required vision more than sight.
Her lineage within the African Diaspora and the nomadic Fulani have expanded her concept of home, encompassing not only shelter, but a culturally rich way of life. Nomad—the artist’s mobile art dwelling project—was conceived decades before it was materialized; its evolution defining the artist’s purpose as a Visual Griot Storyteller. Moving 46 times and traveling by road has enlightened Moody about being at home in the world while navigating the intersections of race, gender, disability, migration, and environment. These creative sojourns have strengthened bonds with family and community through resonating stories of the artist’s social practice.