Zaley Otto

Zaley Otto (b. 2004, Rogersville, Tennessee) is a visual-based artist in Savannah, Georgia. She is earning her BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design, with a major in Painting and a minor in Art History and Fibers. Expected to graduate in May 2027.

Her work explores domestic environments, femininity, and the relationship between. As a woman in the south, she navigates themes of gender development, desire, and the tension between love and autonomy through the lens of humor and play. Her use of shared spaces conveys vulnerability and shared experience. Adorned with glitter, fabric, and found objects, they simultaneously hold the concepts of reality and longing. 

Otto plays with objects and bodies, holding memories within this inability to assign ownership. She reflects on the complexities of girlhood, femininity, and how cultural and personal perceptions of bodily autonomy affect personhood, ownership, history, and responsibility. Her work is an expanding conversation between the tradition of domesticity and all of its structure and confinements, and the freedom and autonomy found in the expanded view.