In Los Angeles, a city known for its ever-evolving landscape and layered cultural narratives, artist Dominique Moody brought an intimate and communal work to life. The NOMAD, a 150-square-foot mobile dwelling crafted from salvaged materials and found objects, stood as both a personal portrait and a statement on displacement, housing insecurity, and the African diaspora.
Presented as part of Frieze Projects’ Inside Out, a curated selection of public art works organized by Art Production Fund, the NOMAD was installed in collaboration with Destination Crenshaw, the ambitious cultural corridor reclaiming and celebrating Black history and artistic excellence along a 1.3-mile stretch of South Los Angeles. For Moody, the opportunity to restage her creation at Frieze LA was perfectly aligned with her long-standing commitment to ensuring that her work could be experienced by as many people as possible.
Moody’s desire for availability is no accident—it stems from her belief that art should spark conversation within communities, particularly those often excluded from high-end art fairs and commercial galleries. “Typically when I show the NOMAD, my whole desire is to have it accessible and free to the public,” she said. “By having that element of it being able to be in a public space where people who don’t or may not be able to afford a ticket to Frieze can still see and appreciate and celebrate art.”
The structure serves as a vessel for stories, experiences, and resilience. It was first crafted out of the pattern that Moody drew from her constant travel, and both the desire to seek out new places, but also the social, economic, and racialized displacement that came into play. This tension between voluntary and forced movement, shaped not only Moody’s life, but her creative practice.
“I always had to figure out, ‘Well, how do I address this challenge, both the ones of desire and then the ones of social disruption?’” she explained. “And in that arose the pattern that I moved frequently, and if I move frequently, I had to keep creating and recreating home space.”
That necessity for reinvention was further complicated by her diagnosis of progressive vision loss, a challenge that forced Moody to rethink how she could continue as an artist. “I started to lose my eyesight,” she shared. “And both as an artist as well as just a Black woman in America, I felt, wow, what a challenge to have to deal with. Can I do this amazing visionary work in light of having been [given] a visual impairment?” The shift in her sight led Moody to assemblage, a medium rooted in touch, memory, and found objects—a natural extension of her story and African American cultural traditions. Moody also found this method was a perfect response to both her art, as well as her changing economic reality.
However, Moody’s eyesight didn’t hinder her creativity—it heightened it. “I had to learn a very basic thing that sight and vision are not the same thing,” The 2017 Seen & Heard Project honoree said. “Sight is a mechanical tool, and we definitely have that, but that tool can get altered. What an artist has is vision, and regardless of the condition of the tool, the vision exists, always.”
For Moody, the unique movable unit’s ability to appear in unexpected places—whether at an institution, a heavily attended event, or now at Frieze—is part of its power. “It has done all of that,” she said. “I’ve gone to museums, and street festivals. I’ve been a mobile artist-in-residence and been to Joshua Tree and New Orleans. I’ve been placed on campuses of a school yard, a university campus, a museum park—all of these spaces where no one would ordinarily expect a house to be.”
The NOMAD, much like Moody’s own journey, is constantly evolving. It invites those who encounter it to reflect on the meaning of home, community, and resilience. And through her layered practice—where memory transforms the discarded into beauty—she continues to reveal the invisible stories embedded in the world around her.
