Fortunate to Have Wandered, tree stump, branches, paint, and twine, 120 x 12 feet, 2018
DANI DODGE
Artist Statement
Dani Dodge uses unexpected sculptural materials to alter spaces.
Her experience as an embedded journalist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq changed her forever. Since then, she has created art and installations that change and challenge expectations.
From brightening a black and white snowy forest in Ireland with luminescent tree stumps to turning a Los Angeles gallery into a gantlet of rotating car parts made from baby blankets, her works play with surrealist ideas using innovative forms.
The installations merge the rational and the dream state. They often require interaction with the viewers.
Although she creates individual works for group shows, she is best known for her installations that confront emotion. In the past she has invited participants share burdens, joys and sins. Her work often incorporates interactive elements that require participants to reveal personal truths, and in doing so recognize our shared human frailties. She has burned people’s fears, thrown people’s burdens into the ocean and typed people’s secrets for the purpose of posting them publicly.
Dodge created site-specific installations at the Coos Art Museum, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, New Museum Los Gatos, Inland Empire Museum of Art, Inglewood Public Library, San Diego International Airport, San Diego Art Institute and more. Dodge’s installation/performance CONFESS at 2015’s LA Pride was named one of the outstanding public art projects of the year by Americans for the Arts.
Her work is included in four museum collections and has been shown across the U.S. and internationally.
Dodge lives and works in Los Angeles.
Past Solo Exhibitions:
Fugitive Love Song, 2017
Past Group Exhibitions:
Gathering Differences, 2017
In The Secret Garden, 2016
Transformed Viewpoints, 2015
A.I.R. ReFreshed, 2015
Liminal Communities, 2014