Dedeaux-Norris's open studio presents an evolving installation of over 250 works on paper, alongside video and participatory elements that extend the project into lived inquiry. The installation functions as both exhibition and research site, where visual language, embodiment, and audience interaction intersect. Central to the project is an interactive survey accessed via QR code, inviting visitors to reflect on perception, identity, and authenticity. This participatory component contributes to Dedeaux-Norris’s doctoral research, which examines authenticity as an emergent process shaped over time rather than a fixed state.

A short film will be presented within the studio, exploring themes of fragmentation, embodiment, and self-construction. Together, these elements form a dynamic environment where artwork, research, and audience engagement operate as interconnected forms of knowledge production.  Their research and dissertation focus on authenticity as congruence across fragmented selves, investigating how lived experience, memory, and social conditions shape the body and its expression. Through this lens, their work challenges fixed identity categories and reclaims complexity as a generative force. 
 

T.J. Dedeaux-Norris is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, and educator whose work examines embodiment, identity, and transformation across time. They are an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Iowa and a doctoral candidate in Transformational Leadership and Coaching at Maharishi International University.

Dedeaux-Norris’s practice moves across performance, installation, video, textiles, and painting, extending beyond the studio into a life-wide inquiry into how identity is formed, fragmented, and reassembled. Drawing from embodied research—including boxing, somatic practices, and therapeutic modalities—their work positions healing as both method and material.