Victoria Dugger’s work explores identity, disability, and Southern heritage through a reimagined Southern Gothic lens. As a disabled Black woman based in Athens, Georgia, she navigates themes of isolation, desire, and visibility, blending vulnerability, beauty, and the grotesque. Her figures—exaggerated, anthropomorphic stand-ins for her own body—are adorned with pearls, frosting, and glitter, merging opulence with decay.
A collection of her work is currently on display at Wa Na Wari in Seattle’s Central District until January 2, 2026. From multilayered paintings that suggest worlds within worlds to twisted sculptures depicting monstrous bodily contortions juxtaposed with beautiful beading, colors, and textures, Dugger’s work is constantly holding two truths at once.
This duality is indicative of an experience all Black folks must navigate throughout their lives in the United States. I talked with Dugger about this ethos in her world and how she brings these tenuous relationships together in her art.
Phillip Russell: First and foremost, how are you? What are you excited about right now, art or otherwise?
Victoria Dugger: I’m good! Honestly, it’s been a really generative year. I’ve been experiencing life, hanging out with friends, and thinking about new ways to expand the worlds I’m building. I’ve got a couple of exhibitions and residencies coming up next year, so there’s this mix of excitement and “okay girl, let’s focus” energy [laughs]. Outside of art, I’m just trying to stay open—more joy, more connection, more thinking.
PR: I feel that for sure. There’s an expansiveness to your work that speaks to that idea of staying open. Something I was immediately drawn to was this duality between beauty and the grotesque, can you talk about that?
VD: Honestly, that duality is where I live. I’m really interested in how beauty and the grotesque aren’t opposites—they’re just different lenses for looking at the same thing. As a disabled Black woman from the South, I’ve always existed in that tension. There’s this pressure to perform a certain kind of beauty, a certain kind of acceptability, and at the same time, there’s the reality of being seen as “too much” or “othered.” So my work leans into that contradiction. Something can be luscious and glittering, and also a little unsettling. I love sitting in that in-between space and letting viewers feel that tug-of-war.
PR: You display those “spaces in between” so vividly. Your art spans a variety of mediums and disciplines from painting to sculpture, installations, and more. How do you decide which form a piece takes?
VD: It usually starts with whatever the idea demands. Some images don’t want to stay flat—they want to spill out of the frame, or curl around a space, or become a body you have to walk around, so I try to be really open to that. It’s definitely a conversation between the art and me, and not being afraid to pivot if need be. I think of mediums as different expressions of the same idea. Sometimes I need the intimacy of painting, other times I need the physicality of sculpture, and sometimes an installation is the only thing big enough to hold all the layers I’m trying to bring forward. I follow where the energy feels the most honest.
PR: An energy so apparent in your work comes from how you use materials. As a Black person myself, I was captivated by your use of braided hair, weaves, and beads. All these things, especially in relation to Blackness and femininity, stood out to me.
VD: Using hair and textiles feels like I’m speaking through the beauty of Black femininity. Those materials carry so much memory, care, labor, and lineage for Black women. They’re tender and political at the same time. When I braid synthetic hair into a painting or build a surface out of beads, it’s an embodiment I’m trying to capture. It’s about honoring beauty rituals, Southern girlhood, disability, the intimacy of being cared for and adorned. It becomes a way of putting myself—my literal textures—back into the narrative and saying yes, Black is beautiful, Black is important, Black women matter too.
PR: Your work is loud; you use a wide range of colors, textures, and forms to weave the stories you tell. How do you view these aspects of your work and process?
VD: I joke that my work doesn’t know how to whisper. I believe loudness can be a kind of survival strategy. I grew up around spectacle—music, pageantry, the drama of the South. That’s in me. And as a disabled Black woman, I’ve internalized so much outward shame and ableism that I never felt that I could take up space. But my art allows me to take up so much physical space, and there’s liberation in that. There’s so much freedom that art allows me to participate in. Color and texture are how I create emotional temperature. They let me build these layered, maximalist worlds that feel both beautiful and overwhelming, the way identity actually feels. The loudness is intentional—it’s my way of taking up space unapologetically.
PR: There seems to be a common thread in your work of this world or reality hidden beneath the surface. Am I right in thinking that? If so, how do you envision that in your work?
VD: Absolutely. I’m always thinking about the stories we inherit versus the ones we live, the selves we present versus the selves we hide. There’s always something simmering beneath the polite Southern exterior, beneath the carefully styled hair, beneath the pretty color palette.
In a lot of my pieces, the surface is this glittering, seductive thing—but if you look longer, you start to see fractures, ruptures, horror—little shifts that hint at another reality underneath. That hidden world is where I’m doing the real work—interrogating desire, pain, transformation, and the strange, liminal spaces we pass through.
This interview was published in partnership with Wa Na Wari as part of our writer-in-residence program. Learn more about the partnership here.