I find my process of art making to be a playful and intuitive act that draws upon the calculated skills that I have mastered in the domestic realm- cleaning, laundry, organizing, multi tasking, cooking… and the list keeps growing
In my art practice however, the process involves more play and expands to the unconventional usage of spaces, materials, risk taking, and impulse to push new combinations and challenge expectations.
I’m drawn to site specificity and develop work that explores an alternate sense of the domestic realm. My practice explores routine interactions of the residential experience to further develop strategies of customizing objects and architecture. I seek out discarded and often inexpensive objects that maintain characteristics of material quality, form, color, etc. Forcing combinations and positions within a space…curtains, house paint, plastic plants, broken furniture all become structural. These unwanted and partially dilapidated objects combine together to become stronger.
My ambition is to develop work that considers the domestic realm as a space to navigate with caution. The objects and rooms within the home carry a history of their own and can develop their owns means to defend.
Vanessa Diaz is a sculptor and installation artist based in South Florida. She is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, a Cintas Fellowship in Visual Art, Windgate Fellowship, and South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship among others. Diaz has developed solo projects for Project Row Houses in Houston, TX, the the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, FL and the Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa, FL. Other exhibition highlights include large scale site-specific installations at the Museum of Contemporary Art Miami, Museum of Art and Design Miami, the Coral Gables Museum, the Orlando Museum of Art, and the Glessner House Museum in Chicago. Her residencies include the Schwandorf Kunstlerhaus, Germany; the BAU Institute at the Camargo Foundation, France; the Atlantic Center for the Arts; VCCA; the Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans; Wassaic Projects and Interlude, NY.
