Made in L.A. 2023: Dominique Moody as Citizen Architect

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Dominique Moody, N.O.M.A.D. (detail) (2015–23). Layered corrugated patina-stained metal, salvaged stainless steel washing machine door, dryer door, vintage barn wood, salvaged globe, found metal objects, plexiglass panels, 1950 tow truck, patinated steel, paint, train horn, and washing machine doors, 151 × 122 × 768 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and the Hammer Museum. Photo: Khari Scott.

On her first day in office in December of 2022, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declared a “state of emergency on homelessness.”¹ Yet today, homeownership remains an insurmountable goal for many, with close to 100,000 individuals living in interim housing or lacking shelter in Los Angeles.² Parked outside of the Hammer Museum, artist Dominique Moody’s mobile dwelling, a utilitarian artwork called N.O.M.A.D. (2015–23), could at first glance be perceived as an uncomfortable reminder of the 1.6 million Californians teetering on edge of houselessness.³ At once a personal dwelling, an artwork, and a model for the future, Moody’s thoughtfully designed project challenges misconceptions, prejudices, and fears surrounding the humanitarian crisis. N.O.M.A.D.’s presence at the Hammer felt less like an indictment of politicians’ failures and more like a proposal for an alternative to affordable housing that is imaginative, creative, and generative. Moody’s project, which she lives in, reveals the necessity of stable housing for a healthy artistic practice while arguing that creativity and public participation have a place in solving the housing crisis. N.O.M.A.D. serves as the blueprint for safely living under precarious conditions made even more hostile by the inactions of politicians and the rigidity of bureaucracy.

Throughout the duration of Acts of Living, Moody spent roughly eight days, in four-hour stretches, in her tiny home. N.O.M.A.D., an acronym for Narrative Odyssey Manifesting Artistic Dreams, is a mere 150 square feet. Moody originally intended the work to occupy the museum’s courtyard, where it would be protected by the institution’s walls.⁴ But unable to fit through the doors, N.O.M.A.D. was parked at the museum’s back entrance on Lindbrook Drive for the duration of the exhibition. Moody’s work was the only one in the exhibition placed outside of the museum context, and disappointingly the only one that seemed to address the disparities of finding shelter in Los Angeles.⁵ Through N.O.M.A.D., Moody positions herself as a “citizen architect,” a decade-old concept that implores creatives to take on the role of civic advocacy in their practice.⁶ While Moody is not an architect by trade, her artistic practice embodies the core tenets of a citizen architect, advancing civic engagement in the community, understanding community needs, and infusing her professional practice with joy and public participation. But ironically, it was only outside of the art institution’s inherently exclusionary bounds that Moody could truly assume this role.

Moody designed N.O.M.A.D. independently using sustainable and found materials such as steel, washing machine and dryer doors, and repurposed barn wood. Hooked to a 1950s Ford tow truck, N.O.M.A.D.’s living space has the capacity for two visitors to enter at a time. In each of her four-hour public sessions, Moody spoke to nearly 70 visitors, each of whom left with a postcard and thoughtful stories from Moody’s experiences in her built space. N.O.M.A.D. has a spacious wooden porch where a tree branch that appears to emerge from underneath the floorboard acts as a decorative column. Two inviting folding chairs are placed on either side, and a mailbox can be found attached to the dwelling’s wall. To step inside, one must pass underneath a salvaged globe, which serves as a reminder of travel, Moody’s own itinerant lifestyle, and her military family’s constant relocation in her youth. Two window-sized frames made of reclaimed wood display Moody’s photo collages, which combine images of N.O.M.A.D. with maps and family photos cut into the shapes of birds and stars. Bench seats in the small interior space are adorned with indigo-dyed textiles and a skylight is covered with perforated aluminum to reflect heat. The space has all the essentials for a comfortable home, including a shower, toilet, kitchen with a spice rack, and a sleeping area.

One can argue that N.O.M.A.D. falls under the category of assemblage art. In the postwar United States, assemblage artists used found materials to produce objects that engaged with a variety of sociopolitical issues and events, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. Assemblage art as a means of social critique especially thrived in Los Angeles, so it isn’t surprising that the medium was a focal point in Acts of Living, which took Simon Rodia’s iconic Watts Towers project as its curatorial guiding light. Moody, who experiences visual impairment, gravitated toward assemblage techniques during her fine arts studies at UC Berkeley in the late 1980s. “I lost some of my sight,” she noted in our conversation, “but I didn’t lose my vision.” Assemblage proved to be a more accessible arts practice, a way of narrativizing her own experience as “a nomadic, contemporary, Western person three hundred years after enslavement.” A nexus between the first generation of Black assemblage artists such as Ed Bereal, Melvin Edwards, and Betye Saar, and those who have arrived after her, Moody describes N.O.M.A.D. as an “act of living”—the same words by Noah Purifoy that are inscribed on a plaque at Watts Towers and from which the exhibition takes its title. As an active and enacted project, the work functions as an assemblage of not only materials, but also memories, emotions, histories, and people. Moody’s dynamic and ever-changing idea of home is not bound to a fixed place.

As a citizen architect, an assemblage artist, and a practitioner of art as social practice, Moody’s N.O.M.A.D. exists in a liminal space between art and life, private and public, within the institution yet outside of it. Her work becomes a safe space for the most marginalized members of society—on one occasion I witnessed an eccentric icon of Westwood Village named Papa Cyrus pay a visit to N.O.M.A.D. Pushing a shopping cart full of orchids, he gifted Moody flowers that she displayed on her tabletop. I wondered, would such spontaneous interactions take place had the mobile home been able to fit through the museum’s doors? Surely not, as museums remain exclusionary spaces despite their many efforts at inclusivity. N.O.M.A.D.’s ability to exist outside of the Hammer Museum opens its impact up to a broader group of people, activating the project in imaginative ways. Back in 2015, Moody parked N.O.M.A.D. in Leimert Park Plaza, where unhoused neighbors took turns visiting the artist and sharing how the space made them feel. Moody told me that City officials were amazed by her ability to connect with people who had refused to speak to them. Facilitated by N.O.M.A.D., these public interventions invite an assemblage of stories and conversations; they also point to the limits of bureaucracy in solving houselessness and prove the effectiveness of creativity in managing the city’s most complex issues.⁷ Vitally, Moody’s project creates space for conversation and connection—a crucial step in addressing inequities in our communities that are often overlooked by the machinations of bureaucracy.

Moody’s work evokes the housing crisis while imagining solutions for it, disrupting our ideas of shelter, art-making, and public space in the process. In our conversation, she discussed a potential project in which shipping containers, commonly used for temporary housing, could be placed in vacant lots throughout the city. Modeled after the bungalow court style, Moody envisions six to eight of these portable N.O.M.A.D.-like homes facing each other with a shared courtyard: “The neighbors will welcome each other and protect one another. It doesn’t have to be a horrible thing that people are afraid of. Today, many people are fearful.” Here, Moody references the general public’s pushback against affordable housing developments in their residential neighborhoods.⁸ Creating spaces that are private and dignified while promoting camaraderie is the cornerstone of Moody’s practice. As a mobile project, N.O.M.A.D. connects various communities and regions, as evidenced by the way it embedded itself in Westwood Village. While Moody’s creative solutions verge on the utopic, her concerns demand serious attention: “If we [artists] want to stay in this city, this is the only thing that’s afforded.” The inclusion of Moody’s project in Acts of Living is important in that it enacts core conceptual tenets of the exhibition, particularly the curatorial aim to show how “creativity can be interwoven with the ordinary terms of our lives.”⁹ Still, markedly separate from the rest of the show, Moody’s important community-oriented work came across as a solitary mission, rather than one involving the institution.

This essay was originally published in Carla issue 35.

Dominique Moody, N.O.M.A.D. (detail) (2015–23). Layered corrugated patina-stained metal, salvaged stainless steel washing machine door, dryer door, vintage barn wood, salvaged globe, found metal objects, plexiglass panels, 1950 tow truck, patinated steel, paint, train horn, and washing machine doors, 151 × 122 × 768 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and the Hammer Museum. Photo: Khari Scott.

Dominique Moody, N.O.M.A.D. (detail) (2015–23). Layered corrugated patina-stained metal, salvaged stainless steel washing machine door, dryer door, vintage barn wood, salvaged globe, found metal objects, plexiglass panels, 1950 tow truck, patinated steel, paint, train horn, and washing machine doors, 151 × 122 × 768 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and the Hammer Museum. Photo: Khari Scott.

Tina Barouti, PhD is an art historian and curator from Los Angeles. She lectures in SAIC’s Art History, Theory, and Criticism department.

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