Dani Dodge, The Unseen Love of Rabbits, digital video, 2021.
Dani Dodge completed a residency at the Prime Desert Woodlands Preserve in 2019. This video is the third in a three-part series, each catching a different vantage point in the Preserve with a motion sensor camera. This camera was placed just outside the large window of the visitor’s center, pointing out into the Preserve. Of the three cameras we set out, this one captured the most interaction between wildlife, and the most fun animal action. Did you know that jackrabbits played and kissed while you weren’t around? Well, the artist had no idea.
Dani Dodge extends her thanks to the Museum of Art and History Curator Robert Benitez and MOAH staff. These videos would not have been possible without your guidance and assistance.
About the artist
Dani Dodge
Dani Dodge uses unexpected sculptural materials to alter spaces. Her experience as an embedded journalist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq changed her forever. Since then, she has created art and installations that change and challenge expectations.
From brightening a black and white snowy forest in Ireland with luminescent tree stumps to turning a Los Angeles gallery into a gantlet of rotating car parts made from baby blankets, her works play with surrealist ideas using innovative forms. The installations merge the rational and the dream state. They often require interaction with the viewers.
Although she creates individual works for group shows, she is best known for her installations that confront emotion. In the past, she has invited participants to share burdens, joys, and sins. Her work often incorporates interactive elements that require participants to reveal personal truths, and in doing so recognize our shared human frailties. She has burned people’s fears, thrown people’s burdens into the ocean, and typed people’s secrets for the purpose of posting them publicly.
Dodge created site-specific installations at the Coos Art Museum, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, New Museum Los Gatos, Inland Empire Museum of Art, Inglewood Public Library, San Diego International Airport, San Diego Art Institute, and more. Dodge’s installation/performance CONFESS at 2015’s LA Pride was named one of the outstanding public art projects of the year by Americans for the Arts.
Her work is included in four museum collections and has been shown across the U.S. and internationally. Dodge lives and works in Los Angeles.