Dominique Moody: Nomadic Stories

Jacqueline Otag What is Nomad, exactly?

Dominique Moody It is an unusual piece. It is both a large-scale, temporary, public artwork that is interactive and meant to be engaged with. But it comes in a form that’s familiar to people: a home. It's very small in terms of a home and it’s mobile. What is unique about Nomad is how it tells a story.

JO What is that story?

DM Nomad is a portrait of my own personal history and the history of my family. In many ways, it is a history of others who have had similar experiences in their life. It’s being presented here and dedicated to the fact that it was constructed in Altadena. The recent firestorms have devastated that community. And if that community had not existed in 2015, a piece of artwork such as Nomad may not have been able to exist: it responds to – and was generated by – the environment, the landscape, the people.

I have a skill set for assembling people and community as much as I do objects. Dominique Moody

JO Can you explain how Nomad came about?

DM This idea was in my head for a very long time. It was almost 30 years for me, and the delay back in the 1980s was the fact that my eyesight was changing and I wasn’t sure how to create a piece like this with that challenge.

The first person I shared the idea with was the assemblage artist John Outerbridge. I confided in him that I had this vision. And one of the things he said is that you must do it out of your own needs, but also that I would have to do something different: I might have to share the idea with the larger arts community in a way that might feel a little uncomfortable.

JO In the sense of it being collaborative?

DM It’s not necessarily a collaborative piece. Just the idea brought people together. I often feel that assemblage is a unique practice, because the idea of using whatever materials you find lends itself to a much broader scope: once you open up the idea of what a material for creativity might be, you get into the non-material and you get into place and into people. The assemblage artist is not just composing objects: we’re bringing together and assembling all aspects of life. Over 50 years of practice, I have a skill set for assembling people and community as much as I do objects.

JO How does that relate to Los Angeles?

DM The Black arts community is what brought me to LA. They were welcoming and I feel that the welcome was really embracing and kinship because I was a fellow assemblage artist, and that that unique form of art practice has a special history here. That’s due in part by the Great Migration and the migration of African Americans to the West, where they brought aesthetics from the South, and traditional ways in which materials are utilized.

JO What is its personal dimension for you?

DM It’s a very intimate projection of my life and my family’s life. I believe that art and art practice has a very vital role in everyday life, that it actually can facilitate healing, understanding and knowledge. When I was building the Nomad, my family got excited about sharing their stories and digging deeper in our family lineage. My sister wanted to present our mother with a gift for her 80th birthday. And that gift was the DNA of our African ancestry.

As children – because we travelled so much – we used the term ‘nomads’. So when my mother read about our tribal DNA roots, it was not a surprise to me that we are of the Fulani and the Hausa, still one of the largest nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes on the planet. It felt like we were connecting to something vital in our lineage. Even though it's been hundreds of years, we had that genetic memory. And memory is a vital part of what Nomad is. Every object has a memory to it. In the 1950s, my parents moved into a travel trailer and ended up with five children travelling through the South.

Art and art practice has a very vital role in everyday life: it can facilitate healing, understanding and knowledge. Dominique Moody

JO How did that come about?

DM My father was an army officer. His job was to recruit in the segregated South, and he knew that he could not go to a hotel, a restaurant, a restroom or even some gas stations without it diminishing himself and his family. So this young couple in their early twenties made a decision to buy a New Moon trailer. It was 45ft long, the largest travel trailer of the time. It was unprecedented for a Black family to be looking at trailer life as a choice, with the freedom of movement attached to it. They went on the road for four years and had a total of five children, each in a different place.

JO So how is that story manifgest in Nomad?

DM Through the building of the Nomad, I got those two stories: my ancestry and my immediate family. If art can do that, if art can uncover something from the past and that something can be created, manifest it for the future, that to me is the epitome of art. And I wanted the public to get some of that.

JO And that affected how you understand it as a work?

DM I could have easily said: Let me take my Nomad, maybe go up to Joshua Tree, park it somewhere and just do my work. But the response I was getting from the public as I was building it was so energetic, so curious. I knew that there was a responsibility. I started to understand how my work became part of a social practice. And it’s that social practice now that I have to give homage to and respond to issues like the impact in Altadena.

JO Bringing this artist home to where other homes have been destroyed?

DM Artists are known – aside from their work – for the magic of their homes and studios. Everyone is intrigued because that's where things happen, that’s where the creativity unfolds. And so when those places are destroyed and and people are displaced from them, it has a visceral impact. And that reverberates through an entire community. The Nomad, I understand now, is a place that I had to craft for myself in order to nurture the things that I dream of way before I go into the studio. Every artist needs that.

Domininque Moody’s Nomad is on show throughout Frieze Los Angeles 2025.

Further Information

Frieze Los Angeles, 20 – 23 February 2025, Santa Monica Airport.

Limited full-price tickets available; 10 percent of the value of all newly purchased tickets is being donated to the fire relief efforts. 

BUY TICKETS

To keep up to date on all the latest news from Frieze, sign up to the newsletter at frieze.com, and follow @friezeofficial on Instagram and Frieze Official on Facebook. 

Frieze Los Angeles is supported by global lead partner Deutsche Bank, continuing its legacy of celebrating artistic excellence on an international scale.