statement
As is true for so many, I am a first generation American due to global strife and upheaval, leading to migration. I feel a connection with immigrant and displaced families all over the world, and this has long been the impetus for my work. I produce distinct series and projects motivated by my personal experience, observations, and world events that affect me emotionally—each taking their own form and medium. These include painting, photography, sculpture, installation, and public participatory projects. I start with research and photography, then progress to other materials as my hands take over—cutting, ripping, sewing, folding, weaving, and collage complete a piece. My recent work has focused on the gap between land and territory: how we litter the Earth and sky with borders, treaties, myths, maps, and histories, forgetting that we will be gone long before the land will disappear. Works include a mobile with countries freed from their fixed positions to float and spin and play; border walls in motion carried on the backs of giant snakes; and a multifaceted erector-set of a cloud metaphorically transporting human thoughts and office waste towards the heavens. The plethora of fictions we scatter upon the land have real consequences to all life on earth and to the planet itself—we endanger ourselves when we forget they are figments of imagination and hubris. Our futures must coexist in this space upon the Earth and beneath the clouds; it is our shared home. I center my work on that belief.
bio
Joyce Dallal is the recipient of several grants and fellowships, among them a National Endowment for the Arts Regional Arts Fellowship in Photography, a Brody Arts Fellowship, and a City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and her temporary and permanent public art projects have been commissioned by the City of Pasadena, the Los Angeles International Airport, the Los Angeles Public Libraries, the Community Redevelopment Agency, and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. She received her Masters in Fine Art from the University of Southern California and founded the Digital Arts Program at El Camino College in Southern California. She currently serves as board president of the non-profit arts organization Inglewood Open Studios.