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ARTIST BIO
Abby Bagby is a sculptor and arts facilitator based in Dallas, TX. In 2014, they received their Bachelor’s in Art from the University of Dallas. While continuing their personal practice, they directed and curated Umbrella Gallery—a non-profit experimental space in the historic Deep Ellum neighborhood—for several years after earning their degree. In the midst of their curatorial debut they became one of the co-founders of ArtSkool, an interactive lecture and discussion series on contemporary art, which continued through 2018. Bagby has exhibited in local and national shows exploring both object-based work and social practice. In 2019, they entered the international sphere by way of Dragon Dance Theatre Residency in Trois Rivieres, Quebec, CA, returning in 2020 to complete the Tongue River Artist Residency in Dayton, WY and to found Odyssey Studios in Dallas, an anticapitalist art space featuring both a performance art gallery and permanent studio space for local artists. Bagby continues to deepen their own practice and curate performance art events at Odyssey Studios.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I work between the bounds of sculpture, fashion, conceptual art and social practice, seeking material connections between beauty and the abject. Concentrating on social mythology, memory, and self-presentation, I take from the legacy of surrealism, happenings, and queer fashion to investigate where the exquisite meets the wretched. I use a mix of traditional sculptural techniques paired with non-traditional castoff organic matter as both form and subject matter. My aesthetic blends performative modes from avant garde and haute couture fashion through the synthesis of high and low materials. My work asks questions about the beautiful and horrific, and it challenges the dominant notion that they are separate entities. To quote philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, “the abject is edged with the sublime”.
In my bodily work, I use mixed media dominated by castoff human hair to emulate animal forms and skin-like surfaces, calling to mind our connection with the earth and our mortality. Through this lens, viewers and participants accept an invitation to interact, whether materially or conceptually, with work that is simultaneously familiar and alien, attractive and repulsive. Rejecting the traditional uses of hair and imposing it on new forms and hosts, the material becomes an icon of human interaction, exposing both harmony and fear. The works take the shape of traditional and contemporary forms that seek legacy, namely cultural garments, fashion, and social media documentation, speaking to both the desperate grasp for immortality and the quiet longing to simply not be forgotten.
My recent work and focus is built on inclusion and the social act of gathering. Being queer, this moves a very primal part of my being, the place where togetherness is survival, as security is not always offered to those deemed “different” from mainstream society. Gathering is a cure to loneliness not only in the abstract, but because it is best experienced in physical form. Touch and energy exchange ignites our creativity and gives us as artists and humans a reason to build. I create spaces that encourage collaborative work, and look for ways to produce in these spaces without capitalism in mind.