Eden Dodd (b.1994) is a welsh artist living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. Her practice is concerned with an epistemological approach to crafting a personal mythology from her own lived experience. Distinctly personal, her artistic research is intimately connected with the emotional states, life events, and socio-political environment she finds herself in at the creation of the work. 

Drawing from both ancient and future realities and symbolic lexicons, the work pulls from all facets of her life – perceived, shattered, and refracted through the philosophical framework of ‘the reflection’.

She has exhibited solo, and as part of group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. selected Exhibitions include; ‘Cŵn Annwn’, Cardiff, 2020. ‘HEARSAY/HERESY’, Spring Break Art Fair, New York, 2021. ‘Death Throes’, Connecticut, 2021. ‘Severance’, Edinburgh 2022. ‘Kunst Im Nomad’, Basel, Switzerland 2022. ‘To Become 2’, Soma, Marseille 2023. ‘Grey’, Transmission Glasgow 2023. ‘Oxide Skin’, PAWGallery, Karlsruhe, 2024.

16 Collective are working with Dodd towards a collaborative play performance Harpy in 2026. Harpy will take place in an offsite venue.

“The performance, set in a nest nestled over a dark void, is situated in an abandoned industrial space – far from the prying eyes of the wider population, acting as rejection of the heightened focus on trans women in British society over the past year since the beginnings of the project.

The nest, featuring bones, refuse, and the eggs of the harpy acts as representative avatar of the reclusive nature of certain bird species (Vultures in the mountains, Coots in bodies of water). The isolated nest/sanctuary acts as deterrents for predators (humans), often inaccessible to them. 

The space proposed, that of an abandoned or disused industrial space, acts as a cross between the two worlds of humans and birds, and sits within the inbetween space of the ‘Harpy’ figure; monstrous and situated in a ‘no-go space’ filled with danger. We can imagine here the reference to a misunderstood  witchlike ‘Baba-yaga’ character that exists within a dark forest, away from human society as a form of protection from persecution. An imagined fantastical world where harpies (trans women) exist as part-bird monstrosities (angelic to some, horrific to others) – claws and all. They would roost in inaccessible spaces such as this in the same way that pigeons inhabit abandoned buildings – close enough to be considered a threat by those who do not, or will not, understand them. 

Like pigeons, their human-half desires to be close to other humans, they speak english, and will have been at one point fully human, but through their transition (medical, magical, or otherwise), they are seen as outsiders – too close to something greater and therefore frightening.

They roost in ruins of human habitations, memories of their human past driving them to seek sanctity in something resembling the homes they grew up in and desire to be able to thrive in, but are currently being hounded by the ‘good’ people of our current increasingly-conservative society.”

– Eden Dodd.

Collaborators for this project include:

– Sarah McCormack: designer

– Sam Wood: prop designer

– Jack Thomson: photographer, material consultant

– 16 Collective: curation