Email: HallieOff@gmail.com
CV: Linked Here

(b.1990, Sacramento, CA). A laborer, a queer, an artist. Neither of Off’s parents have college degrees. They are a first generation artist and scholar. Trained in social practice and visual / critical studies Off is an artist, writer, educator, and astrologer born in Sacramento and raised in the Midwest. Their work is rooted in the radical cultural politics of the Punk, DIY, Queer, and Anarchist communities in Grand Rapids, MI where mutual aid and community organizing are core philosophies. Today their work investigates art practices across all states of being, media, and classification to remedy the negative effects of capitalism and colonization on de-valued, fractured, and erased beings, social structures, and knowledges.

Off does not differentiate between “correct” and “incorrect” methods for art making, choosing to opt for a situational and reflexive approach that responds to society's needs. Some moments call for writing, some for community organizing, some for service, and some for traditional methods like sculpture or video work. They work in clay because it offers a rich conceptual framework to explore themes of community organizing, memory, language, grounding, body, and perception: facets that are continually fractalized by colonization and in need of repair.

The artist is drawn to visibilizing the complexities of lived experience that lie just outside of normative perception through abstraction, abjection, and the formation of contemporary corporeal reality in clay which is queer and deviant. Similar to the work of Hieronymus Bosch and David Altmejd, the work straddles a line between reality and fantasy questioning and problematizing the assumption of a visuality that is fixed and stable. Off leaves trace, touch, and texture to highlight what often becomes invisibilized on the body - the accumulation of experiences that shape us.

Off seeks to redirect the accumulation of harmful western ideologies towards new social realities that encompass holistic inclusivity, radical care, and timelines that are built upon slow practices. They ask us to perceive ourselves as active agents in creating a holisticism that proliferates through time, knowing it doesn’t happen tomorrow or individually, but together over the duration of human existence.

A Brief On Objectification -
I do not make objects. I am a subject maker who problematizes the idea and existence of objects. Objectification removes the agency of things / beings to act of their own accord and desires. It is a tactic of oppression. Objectification allows unequal extraction and control. A gaze is cast out, but not returned.
I make subjects, abstract beings, who gaze back asking, “look at what I have become.”

A Brief on Ritualism -
coming soon

A Brief on the Circularity of Time -
coming soon

A Brief on Queerness -
coming soon

Off has shown work nationally in Wisconsin, Chicago, California, and Michigan. They have attended residencies at Ceramics School in Detroit, Mendocino Art Center, and High Desert Test Sites (upcoming).

For 3 years, during covid, they co-led a kitchen to feed 150+ artists daily at the nation’s second oldest artist residency OxBow School of Art in Saugatuck, MI. At OxBow they co-developed a visiting artist series bringing in faculty, residents, and staff to make artworks pertaining to personal histories through the intersection of food and performance.

They have taught as an Adjunct Professor of Visual Studies at Grand Valley State University.