In light of the Paris terrorist attacks, Dani Dodge’s interactive installation “Peeled & Raw” is even more relevant than when she conceived it. The work explores fear and the ways — appropriate and inappropriate — that we deal with it. Her thoughts in creating the exhibition revolved around our fears and how they impact other people, just as we are seeing more stereotyping of Muslims and Syrian refugees. In the past, Dodge’s work has focused on our country’s past misdeeds, such as in World War II, when we interned Japanese-Americans in concentration camps like Manzanar in Lone Pine.
Her current installation “Peeled & Raw” was conceived after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris.
Please join us for the opening reception of “Peeled & Raw,” a solo exhibition at the LA Artcore Brewery Annex, from 1 to 3 p.m. December 6, 2015. The interactive installation explores our fears.
Where: 650A S. Ave. 21, Los Angeles, CA 90031
Show run: December 2 to December 27, 2015
Description: Rather than making objects, Los Angeles artist Dani Dodge seeks to create moments. With “Peeled & Raw,” she focuses on fear and what happens when we try to cover it up rather than facing it. Whether it be fear of terrorism or the fear of having our flaws exposed on Facebook, it is what we do with fear that determines who we are.
With “Peeled & Raw,” Dodge allows participants to pick away at the layers of her installation, and in doing so face — and then shed — their own fears.
At first glance, the installation could be a normal living room. There’s a couple on the couch watching a DIY home show on TV. Pictures hang on the walls. But everything is covered with wallpaper. Everything. Even the couple. Each layer is another attempt to change who we are and what we show to the world, and to hide from what frightens us the most.
Visitors enter the room and use their fingernails to pick away at the wallpaper on the walls, and then peel away strips. Underneath the first layer, they find another, and another, and another …
Participants write their fears onto the strips of wallpaper they have removed and discard them on the floor. When the exhibit closes, Dodge will sweep up all the fears, put them into a barrel, and burn them.
About Dani Dodge Dodge is a former journalist. She was embedded with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Unit during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 when she realized that words did not give her enough tools to say everything she needed to say about the state of humanity. She became an artist so she could tell stories through abstraction, interaction, and unique experiences. Her work is in three museum collections.
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