Meet Tova Mozard | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Tova Mozard and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Tova, how has your background shaped the person you are today?
Where are you from and how did your background and upbringing impact who you are today?

I was born in Sweden but moved around a lot during my upbringing. My parents were artists and “hippies”. They wanted the good life with homegrown vegetables, living as a collective and prioritizing art and solidarity and friendship.
Almost as being each other parents and raising the kids amongst them together.
I think it all became a bit too much and it ended for everyone in different scenarios.

This impacted me in different way. One part of me is cynical and rational and mistrusting. Another one is curious and comfortable around a lot of different people and, I always felt the power and love that comes from art so therefore I became an artist.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I work very personal in an almost intrusive way with both myself and sometimes others. I walk a fine line between genuine curiosity and intimacy and the personal void of pain and repression.
This I’m excited about but proud is not a word I would use when speaking about my own art.
I got to where I am now due to being
persistent and a will to overcome life’s boredom and my own personal pain. Also, I have a very good foundation and relationship to the artistic expressions that was cemented as a very young person. I saw my parents and them collogues trying different expressions and ways of living the “art life” and that also plays a role in how I tackle the everyday small work moments as an artist, I saw what worked and what didn’t.
Both easy and hard.
The lesson I learned is to never let anyone diminish or belittle your passion for the small things you care about in your art making. It’s very crucial that you pay attention to the details and nourish them. Also, that it pays off to do super boring tasks and ask for help in talking about them or executing them. But the payoff might be far away in the future.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I would eat breakfast at Canters on Fairfax then go visit my friend Eddy Rice Jr. who lives on Hollywood Blvd. and hear about his latest jobs as a clown and maybe see if he bought some new costumes or wigs. Then we go to Larry Edmunds bookstore also on Hollywood Blvd and stroll around and see the beauty and decay. We would eat at Musso and Franks Grill and then take a late-night drink at The Frolic Room.
After that we go to a Korean Spa and spend the night there.
Next day we visit MOCA, LACMA and Geffen and some galleries I selected and then we go to Roosevelt hotel and hang by the pool and read och sleep a bit. Then a quick foot massage and then go eat some tacos outside Lassen’s in Silverlake, after that a drink or dinner at The Dresden Room and then catch a film at Los Feliz Theatre.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I want to credit my mother who put me I different dance schools as a young girl. She could recognize that I needed to get some extra energy out of my body and that I had another type of language inside me that wasn’t sports, mathematics or playing games with friends. I need to be alone preoccupied by something greater than what was naturally around me. I want to thank my dead father who introduce me to Elvis Presley who gave me comfort and hope and was my “stand in” for absent parents and who gave me an insight in how love can be something bigger and greater and how it can be intertwined with loneliness and heartache as well.

Website: https://www.tovamozard.com

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Image Credits
1. Titel: The Big Scene, Video, 2012, filmstill
2. Titel: Psychic, 2018, Video, filmstill
3. Titel: “Smoke”, Video, 2018, filmstill
4. Titel: Abduction, Performance, 2024
5. Titel: Psycho, C-print, 2003
6. Titel: Cliftons, C-print, 2003
7. Titel: The Big Sleep, C-print, 2010
8. Titel: Psycho, C-print, 2003