Grant Recipients Grants to Artists Music/Sound 2025

Dorian Wood

Dorian Wood stands smiling against a black background. Centered, she faces the camera with her hands in her pockets. She wears a black dress with embroidered flowers and leaf earrings.
Photo by Laura Pardo.
  • 2025 Grants to Artists
  • Music/Sound
  • Antidisciplinarian
  • Born 1975, Los Angeles, CA
  • Lives in Watertown, MA
  • She/Her, They/Them
  •  
  • Additional Information
  • dorianwood.com

    • This award is supported by the FCA Friends.

Artist Statement

I believe my purpose is to be a vessel for change, objection, color, and kindness.

- December 2024

Biography

Dorian Wood is an antidisciplinary artist. Her intent of "infecting" spaces and ideologies with her creative practice is born from a desire to challenge traditions and systems that have contributed to the marginalization of people.

In 2023, Wood premiered Canto de Todes, a touring 12-hour composition and installation. Inspired by a lyric of the late Chilean singer and songwriter Violeta Parra, the project emphasizes the urgency of folk music as a vessel for social change. Canto de Todes upends the rigidness often associated with chamber music performances by offering a welcoming space that allows individuals to project their personal and communal joys and traumas. Wood received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant to support the work’s premiere at REDCAT in Los Angeles, CA, and has also performed Canto de Todes at Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY (2024); Fusebox Festival, Austin, TX (2024); Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE (2023); and Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA (2023).

In 2024, Wood toured their tribute to Sinéad O'Connor—in which they perform the album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got in its entirety in a raw piano and voice format—to Joe's Pub at The Public, New York, NY; Brown University, Providence, RI; and El Molino, Barcelona, Spain.

Her work has also been shown at SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM (2024); MAK Center for Art and Architecture, West Hollywood, CA (2024); Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA (2022); and the Berdache Festival, Barcelona, Spain (2022), among many other venues. Wood’s recordings include Excesiva (Dragon's Eye Recordings, 2023) and You are clearly in perversion (2023, Astral Editions), in collaboration with Thor Harris.

Wood is the recipient of an LA County Performing Arts Recovery Grant from the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture (2023), a City of Los Angeles Independent Master Artist Project Grant (2023), and a NALAC Fund for the Arts grant (2023).

Dorian Wood stands behind a microphone with her arms out the sides and her head tilted, wearing heart-shaped sunglasses. She appears in front of a red, orange, and pink background and is bathed in orange light. Part of her body is in shadow and she does not wear a top.

Performance still from La nada que te ama at LA Dance Project, Los Angeles, 2024. Performed as part of the performance series ABUNDANCE, presented by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). Photo by Angel Origgi.

Dorian Wood sings on stage in front of a purple background behind a microphone. She wears pink overalls and a t-shirt that reads “THANK GOD FOR ABORTION” and next to her is a music stand. Towards the right of the image, a blurry silhouette of an audience member partially blocks a guitarist on the stage.

Performance still from Canto de Todes, Movement I at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE, 2023. Photo by Ben Semisch.

Dorian Wood stands naked on a stage singing in front of a blue background. She holds a microphone in one hand and a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses in the other and is illuminated by deep blue light. She is partially obscured by silhouettes of audience members in the foreground.

Performance still from La nada que te ama at SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM, 2024. Photo by Keith Scott.

Dorian Wood stands at a microphone in front of a projected purple-and-white image of a person with a long lock of hair covering their eyes. She wears a green and white patterned long-sleeved dress and is illuminated by soft purple light.

Performance still from Musa Cerdota at Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan, 2024. Photo by Juan Peiró.

Carry us, nourish them at MAK Center, West Hollywood, CA, 2024.

Canto de Todes recording session at Roy O. Disney Concert Hall, Valencia, CA, 2024. Voice: Dorian Wood. Guitar: Michael Corwin. Cello: Adrián Cortés, April Guthrie, Christopher Votek, and Emily Elkin.