An oeuvre that has spanned over 50 years, Dominque Moody’s work has centered the cultivation of freedom through self-agency, housing, mobility, and practice—so much so that she adopted the term assemblege (purposefully spelled with an e to separate the term from Eurocentric ideas) to define her approach. A self-described nomad, Moody is familiar with the impermanence of a place to call home, instead claiming her own space in the world through her art. Moody creates works from found objects and imagery as well as poetic storytelling drawn from dreams and history. Her architectural structures house a narrative that speaks to the Black diaspora, the contemporary housing crisis, and family dynamics.
The Samella Lewis Contemporary Art Collection at Scripps College includes Moody’s piece The Dream Window (1999), a limited edition giclée print of an original piece made in 1996. The print currently resides in the office of Scripps Vice President and Secretary of the Board of Trustees, Denise Nelson Nash. Its generous amount of detail alludes to the physicality of the photographed object, allowing for a tactile view. Printed on a deckle edge paper, the imperfect organic edges compliment the piece’s act of recalling the past and evoke a sense of craftsmanship. A closer look at The Dream Window opens a conversation that examines the history of Black diaspora and the beauty in resistance.
Crafted from a salvaged window, the original work is an assemblege piece adorned with layers of transparent images. The piece depicts multiple Black figures looking toward a globe sitting at the ocean’s horizon. One of the first pieces created for a solo exhibition at the Watts Tower Art Center, The Dream Window began in the REM stage of sleep. Moody’s retelling of her dream from many years ago that inspired the work is poetic: she describes a scene of the figures waiting upon a shore and a globe contoured by the continent of Africa, which calls upon its people to return home. The figures gracefully allow the current to carry them away. It envelops them in the water as words echo: “The people are coming.”
Unbeknownst to Moody, her evocative vision of this event was a symbolic retelling of the Igbo Landing mass suicide of 1803. The historical revolt included about seventy-five Igbo people of western Africa. Although captured, they did not succumb to their enslavers, but mutinied against them. Taking over the ship and eventually docking at Dunbar Creek, bound together by chains, the Igbo people chose emancipation in death and unity rather than a life of enslavement. The legacy of Igbo Landing exemplifies freedom in resistance. Through its preservation in oral history, people have gained power in authorship and visibility and rejected Eurocentric archival practices within institutions.
Moody’s work considers the ongoing violence of Black erasure. As a Black female artist, regeneration is a key component not only to her work, but also to her existence. Using her own life experiences, Moody’s storytelling reaches the viewer in a way that is sincere and communicative. The use of personal imagery in her work disrupts the colonial view of Black people. Not only does the Black family photo album present a destigmatized image of Black family life, but it also acts as a surrogate for self-representation for Black audiences. The camera gives Black communities agency to document their own stories and truths. Through her assemblege structures and oral documentation, Moody is cultivating a powerful anti-archive.
The Dream Window commemorates the people of Igbo Landing and illustrates the liberty in seeking refuge in home as one knows it. Everyone defines home differently; for Moody that definition encompasses community, agency, and possibility. Refusal to accept systemic limitations, Moody has lived a nomadic lifestyle. This has allowed her to recast displacement as potential, claim empowerment in mobility, and choose where to be at home in the world. Moody now resides in one of her own creations, a mobile structure she calls N.O.M.A.D. An ode to her ancestral roots and the Black diaspora, this work functions as both a private space and a commentary on the United States housing crisis. Through her art, Moody has merged creative and domestic space, rebelling against the status quo and allowing for the possibility to choose freedom by any means, in a place called home.
Written By Raylene B. Olalde CSULB ’24, Getty Marrow Collections Intern 2024.