Artist Statement

I was raised in the American South by my gentle working-class grandparents. We were all transplants from the north. My grandmother cooked, and my grandfather built things out of wood and repaired engines in propane trucks as a mechanic. They taught me to work hard and to make beautiful things by hand.

I have become a lens-based artist, but my earlier identity as a painter shines through in my art. I have worked with watercolor, ink, light, salt, indigo, and heat. In the past, I have worked with oil paint, sequin fabric, bleach, and velvet. As I pursue the truth of these materials, my work explores human perception and longing. I connect with the material's inherent qualities and properties as I work. I listen for the work that needs making. I record it with experimental video or in alternative process photography.

My work explores human perception and understanding of what it means to be human in our dynamic and changing environment. It addresses personal and collective memory and questions about time and being.

My research investigates embodiment, displacement, language, and longing. I often use the body or the absence of the body to articulate a yearning for a better future. A future yet to be imagined or expressed. I contemplate art history, pop culture, speculative fiction, and emerging technologies. My immersive videos and paintings provide pathways for connection in our disconnected time through phenomenological inquiry.


Artist Biography

As an internationally exhibited artist, joy tirade has shown work at The Kamloops Art Gallery (British Columbia), Universitet I Oslo (Norway), Vilnius Academy of Arts (Lithuania), Ideas Block LT (Lithuania), and CICA (South Korea).

joy has exhibited nationally in the Mid-Atlantic Region at The Mint Museum, The Ackland Art Museum, CAM, The Carrack, and LUMP projects in North Carolina, and in Virginia at The Garage, The Bridge PAI, WTVF/Radio IQ Gallery, New City Arts, Art Works Gallery, The IX Building, and Ruffin Gallery at the University of Virginia.

Her work has appeared in numerous other venues, including The Masur Museum (Monroe, LA), The Fluorescent Gallery (Nashville, TN), The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center (Covington, KY), Red Ink Studios (San Francisco), and at LACDA (Los Angeles).

joy tirade's work has appeared in several publications, including The Third Coast, The Virginia Literary Review, 3.7, Summmer, and the Mildred Pierce zine. Recently, her work was published by Routledge Press as a book cover. amzn.to/2p8ZYHU

joy tirade holds a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art and Theory from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously, she graduated from the University of Virginia with Distinction and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa and was awarded a Bachelor of Art in Studio Art and Art History.

She lives and works in Oakland, California, where she teaches art and facilitates a free community artist collective whose goal is to offer free art advice for beginners; see @__officehours on Instagram.