ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice centers around Blackness not only as a subject matter but as a way of being. I produce work in the mediums of video, performance and photography, and I DJ and produce music as MUSE(O)FIRE. Drawing from my personal history both actual and imagined; I explore what it means to be black and free, and how Blackness exists in the near future. I am obsessed (read disgusted) with how America consumes Black and Queer culture. My practice is grounded in the politics of refusal, of baring the invisible visible and contradicting the norm. White supremacy is not the poison in the water, it is the water, so by existing in this Black, Queer, trans body I am resisting. I started my artistic journey looking for a way to piece together these holes in my history, this longing for home and for self-led me to my first solo-exhibition and film (Re)mnants. I was interested in creating a family myth of my own. Weaving together oral histories, family photos, dreams, recipes and distant memories I fashioned a quilt of a film that transcended the boundaries of my physical reality. I see my work as a point of entry, a way to further access difficult subjects. I want to involve community and facilitate important conversations about identity and trauma, I want to provide a place for Black people to be able to see our humanity and the beauty of our struggle and how we are so much more than what we can offer.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Originally from Severn, MD, Muse Dodd (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and DJ based in New Orleans. Their work centers on the questions, How do you remember and what do you choose to forget? Through the act of remembering, Dodd uses their body to map the lived experience of Africans in America. Muse channels trauma to connect with, process and alchemize pain; both personal and collective through movement, ritual and collective dreaming.
Dodd holds a BA in film production from Howard University and studied at the Film Academy in Prague. Dodd is a Source Studio Fellow and recipient of the Corrina Mehiel Grant. Dodd is a 2019-2020 Leslie Lohman Museum Artist Fellow and was the 2019 DCAC Curatorial Fellow . A former Artist-in-Residence at the Flux Factory, they were also a 2018 Artist-in-Residence at the ARoS Museum in Denmark. Dodd’s video work has been commissioned for performances at The Shed, Mabou Mines Theater, and Dixon Place, and has screened and exhibited work at Lincoln Center, The BWI Marshall Airport, Prince George’s African American Museum and Cultural Center, The DC Arts Center, and The Flux Factory. Through their work, Dodd hopes to create space for Black bodies to be free, if only for a frame.
© Muse Dodd