There's no denying that what the experimental playwright and University of Texas at Dallas professor brings to the table is unique, necessary, and refreshingly off-the-wall.
—D Magazine
Select / Historical Press
Press Conference, Hunan. China
I find myself increasingly applauding artists whose work creates a vibrant experience that isn’t easy to categorize, those responsible for creating art that happens in between specific media or practices. I also gravitate toward an artist capable of creating a self-contained world, a feat not to be undervalued. That being said, I have a great admiration for the work of Thomas Riccio, a cross-disciplinary artist who has recently become better known for his work in performance and theater, although he is equally at home in the gallery.
—GlassTire / Texas
16 October 2025
“I wake when my body decides. Coffee espresso outside. Look at the vines on salvaged metal trellises from a scrapyard. In fall, they’re changing in ways I can feel but not name. A bird I don’t recognize. Clouds are performing their dissolution. I’m not observing—I’m participating. The world tells me what it’s doing if I stand still enough. I pet my dogs, Oskar and Pierre. I love them so. ”
“I grew up in the 1950s as a fan of classic horror and sci-fi during the peak of American Dream propaganda. I experienced the rise of the American Zombie. Every Saturday, I went to the Madison Theatre, where for twenty-five cents, I could scream and be scared, later having nightmares. They showed Three Stooges shorts between movies, blending horror, comedy, and absurdity with the heartbreaking beauty of Cleveland in my mind. ”
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Republic of Sakha, Siberia
“Human-to-human interaction isn’t that what life and happiness are all about? Reward and success are understood in terms of emotional, physical, and mental effort. And that’s exhausting, fulfilling, and rewarding. That is what is lacking, what humanity is losing, and what is being taken from us by technology, consumerism, materialism, and urbanization. People sharing with other people. ”
Riccio began to think about creating a piece of theater that didn’t necessarily take place in any particular space, but rather used the entire city as its stage, expanding the definition of a theatrical production so broadly that the Zombies could claim any space to perform.
—D Magazine
“We all have the power, to become meta meme selfie self-aware and savvy masters of our own remixed universe. ”
“I see my work like that of a diviner. When I meet a group of people that I am going to work with, it is thier needs that I must discover and respond to. The confluence of the inner and outer world is the center and what dictes the work. It guides the work and tells what needs to be evaluated, affirmed, and balanced. This is the practical function of theatre. ”
Kathmandu, Nepal
Press conference, Siberia
There is something in what I do, what I try to express through the Dead White Zombies, the meta-narrative that underlies: you can’t have unlimited growth on a finite planet. White culture is a death machine. Dead, but like a zombie, somehow still walking around, still causing all sorts of destruction, cannibalizing what little remains until there is nothing left. We are delusional, placated, pacified, willfully ignorant, numbed by the immensity of our predicament. Everything seems fine because we are no longer autonomous. It’s like slitting our wrists in a warm bath. We are all Dead White Zombies.
—from an interview / Voyage Dallas
Stockholm, Sweden
Durban, South Africa
Chicago
Helsinki, Finland
Helsinki, Finland
Johannesburg, South Africa
Finland
Seoul, Korea
Sakha, Siberia
Fairbanks, Alaska
Sakha, Siberia
Press Conference, Frankfurt, Germany
South Africa
