Michele Stueven
Over the weekend, more than 100 local and global galleries and artists converged at the Santa Monica Airport inside the structure designed by Kulapat Yantrasast’s architectural studio, WHY, for the Frieze Art Fair.
Art was on display in every form and medium – including black salt margaritas from Caroline Styne inside the Dobel Tequila tent filled with LA artist Roberto Benavidez’s works of brightly colored playful pinatas in the forms of animals and mystical creatures.
NOMAD Bathroom (Michele Stueven)
The event opened with an invitation-only preview on Thursday, Feb. 20, welcoming a mix of attendees, including prominent collectors, museum leaders, and celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow, Oliver Stone and Michael Chow. Over four days, Frieze Los Angeles welcomed 30,000 visitors from 85 countries, including leading collectors and representatives from at least 150 major museums and institutions. The fair also presented special programming spotlighting museums, artist-run spaces, and nonprofit institutions
Perhaps the most bittersweet and significant LA story at this year’s art fair was that of assemblage artist Dominique Moody’s NOMAD, a livable art and truck trailer dwelling that functions as a mobile artist in residence.
The handbuilt house trailer of wood and steel construction is made from found objects, washer and dryer machine doors, corrugated metal, vintage salvaged hardwood, bicycle rims, and other reclaimed wood and textiles.
NOMAD Kitchen (Michele Stueven)
“Out of necessity comes art,” said Moody, who is 60 percent sight-impaired. “Living in LA, it actually became a necessity to come up with a creative solution for my housing needs right after the housing crisis in 2008. I’ve wanted to do this since the 80’s, and by the time I turned 50, it was time. It was a very long journey, but once I realized I needed to activate it, I talked to a dear artist friend, John Outterbridge, who connected me with friends from Alta Dena, where he had his family home. His sage advice was such an epic step that I needed support from the community. I did every inch of this. It’s not just material objects that you find; it’s also people and community that you assemble.”
From 2019 to 2020, Moody did a residency at Side Street Projects at John Muir High School and worked on using salvaged windows and doors to create a micro greenhouse on wheels called “Our Garden of Dreams.” The NOMAD has traversed the country from Joshua Tree to New Orleans, a comfort for Moody, whose father was an army officer whose job it was to recruit in the segregated South.
Her installation was part of the Frieze Projects Inside Out, curated by the Art Production Fund in partnership with Destination Crenshaw.
While the trailer, built in Alta Dena from 2012-2015, survived the Eaton fire while being on the road, many of her other works did not. Twenty-four hours before the fires began to rage, Moody had delivered three major pieces of art to the late noted Black artist and community activist Outterbridge’s home.
“His daughter Tammy had bought art for the first time from me,” says Moody. “The home was filled with her father’s art collection. It was all destroyed in the fire. Within the Alta Dena area, six works of mine in various collections are now gone. That community was so open to this idea, which was hard to envision and explain to others. It’s that kind of support that artists need.”
NOMAD (Michele Stueven)