About the Event
Join the Moody and the artist Danielle Dean to celebrate the opening of, Death Drive, a new installation in the Off the Wall program.
Enjoy light bites and beverages while hearing from the artist. Off the Wall at the Brochstein Pavilion is a partnership between the Moody Center for the Arts and the Core Residency Program at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. The series commissions Core residency program alumni to create a site-specific installation for this space that will be on view for one year.
The idea for the work was triggered by the artist’s research at the archives of Ford Motor Company in Detroit. The center composition is based on two historic car advertisements, one for Ford Lincoln (1940) and one for the New Ford Explorer (2015). This image, originally executed as a watercolor painting, was extended laterally by two scenes, also painted in watercolor. These additions reproduce Brazilian vegetation, populated with various indigenous burial artifacts and a computer screen. Each section was scanned and combined to produce the digitized rendering now on display. As seen here, Dean reconnects the geographies materially integrated by Ford’s global production line but ideologically disconnected and ignored in the corresponding commercial imagery for the auto manufacturer. The work highlights the environmental repercussions of car production and advertising and how these practices have long relied on exploiting other geographies and peoples.
