Duma Mock

Instagram: @mockthings

Bio: Duma Mock is a sculptor living in Oakland, California. She works primarily in wood, metal arts, ceramic, and textiles in a seasonal rotation. She works a day job as preparator for SFO museum and teaches and makes art at the Crucible in West Oakland. She loves the smell of the bears at the Oakland Zoo.

Statement: I create sculptural props: objects that have an aura of narrative without collapsing into Story. Beginning with a form that charms and repels me, I collapse my experience of that form into the prop in its slanting articulation. I am drawn to the gaudy tool and the utilitarian adornment; I love side chairs that were never intended to be used. I celebrate craft, queerness, and the pathetic. A technical mistake is always an opportunity for adornment; adornment is always an opportunity to be gay. I am seeking out a soft pivot in service of a trans liberation. To use these works to build a common vocabulary of slanted signifiers to point towards what that liberation might look like. Through sculpture, I circumscribe fantasies that are both familiar and secret.