Yadira Dockstader (b.1983) is a Mexican-American interdisciplinary artist from Southern California. She  is a currently an MFA candidate at the University of California Irvine. She received her B.A. in Studio Art and Art History from the University of California Riverside. Exhibitions include Internal/ External at Phyllis Gill Gallery, Body Politics at The Torrance Art Museum, I Don’t Want to Talk About It (But I Will If You Want Me To) at UCR Arts Sweeney Art Gallery, Soundpedro Mingle 2023 and Soundpedro Chavarri, 2024. Dockstader works in moving image, sculpture, sound, performance, installation and hybrid modes. 

Dockstader seeks to expose the ableism and socioeconomic circumstances that inhibit the lives of those living with hidden disability and pain. Projects reveal the experience of chronic illness and examine concepts of intimacy and the labor involved with such illness. Exploring the relationship between the inner self and the external realities, Dockstader’s work engages object memory. Repurposed therapy devices, digital health tools and aids for reproductive labor raise questions related to the confinement of a body, socio-political constraints, consumerism and loss of autonomy. Sculptural forms operate as guises, surrogates and stand-ins.  The work's performative and physical installation qualities bring symbolic, conceptual, material and empirical meaning, in order to explore themes around the body’s imminent travails.