Tanya Doody is a Canadian artist working in a variety of media including ceramics, sculpture, performance and video. Her work revolves around craftivist strategies, performative acts, and poetics gestures.
Tanya holds an MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD) in Fine and Media Arts, a BFA from University of Victoria in Visual Arts, a Diploma from Sheridan College in Crafts and Design (Ceramics), and a certificate of Fine Crafts (Ceramics) from the New Brunswick College of Craft an Design. She currently lives and works in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.
ARTIST STATEMENT
In Tanya’s work, she often finds ways to get clay into the hands of others through participatory performance situations, there by upsetting the primacy of the visual to bring focus to the sense of touch. Tactile interactions lead to somatic modes of attention that focus on the body in gesture. Attentive gesture making grounds her performance work, where she seeks to express ideas of materiality and the body through direct, haptic experiences.
Tanya’s work poses the question: Can an object / material outside of the body be a catalyst for producing renewed strategies of embodiment? In search of different and poetics uses for objects, paths are traced that lead back to the body. She often employs clay and ceramics, material traditionally used in the production of functional items for human use, as a way to re-connect the body to its environment, the bodies of others, and itself.
August 2017
