Daisy Wiley

Statement

I track the often imperceptible: ideological undercurrents that fade in and out of comprehension, the hidden knotted roots of cultural mythologies, historical specters conjured anew... It can feel nearly impossible to name the narratives and logic embedded in the spaces we inhabit. Mythologies rooted in excess, exclusion, rampant expansion, and extraction are contrived to justify the sacrifice of peoples, cultures, and lands. My studio practice unearths these ideologies through place-specific materials, (counter-) archives, and traced histories. My recent work uses the visual languages of trophy taxidermy, Dutch vanitas, and Victorian fly tying to highlight bourgeois, colonial, and imperial narratives embedded within the recreation industry. The work oscillates between preservation and decay, lived reality and imitation—pointing towards the ongoing destruction of ecosystems that occurs as those that are alienated from nature attempt and fail to return to it.

I move between installation, sculpture, bookmaking, printmaking, and traditional craft in response to the spaces I inhabit. My research is driven by Marxist theory, political ecology, public memory studies, speculative fiction, and my organizing experiences in local movements around tenancy, common ownership, and land use. I use installation to transform material into metaphor and image into storyteller. Each element prompts inquiry beyond the expected and strives to create space for new ways of relating to and reconciling with the land and one another.

Bio

Daisy Wiley (b. 1993, Washington metropolitan area) is an interdisciplinary artist that works to unearth the cultural narratives embedded in spaces through engagement with place-specific materials, (counter-) archives, and traced histories.

Daisy earned a BFA in Studio Art and a BFA in Graphic Design from James Madison University in 2017. She earned an MFA from Syracuse University in 2022, where she also teaches courses in the School of Art. In addition to her official studies, Daisy completed courses in printmaking, media theory, and comparative literature as a non-degree seeking student at The Corcoran School of Art and Cornell University. She also knows how to hand-rear parrots, coordinate an emergency rally, is learning to read water, distinguish distant bird calls, and can find data on most any local slumlord through corporate investigation and GIS parcel data.

Daisy’s work has been exhibited at the Fahrbereitschaft in Berlin, Germany, Missiongathering in Pasadena, CA, The Spruce Gallery in Indiana, PA, The Ink Shop and the Tjaden Experimental Gallery in Ithaca, NY, ArtWorks Gallery in Harrisonburg, VA, as well as included in national print portfolio exchanges. Residencies of note include the Berlin Semester Residency in 2022, the Los Angeles Turner Residency in 2021, and the Indiana, PA Spruce Residency in 2019.