Artist Name: Tatiana Arocha
Residency Dates: April – June 2023 & June 2026
Born: 1974
Hometown: Manhattan, NY
Lives & Works: Brooklyn, NY
URL: http://www.tatianaarocha.com/
Education:
2016 | Mural Arts Philadelphia Training Program, Philadelphia, PA
1999 | BFA in Graphic Design, Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, Bogotá, Colombia
Bio/Statement:
Tatiana Arocha was one of the selected artists for the 2023 NYC-Based Artist Residency Program.
Tatiana Arocha is a New York-born Colombian artist. Her art practice explores intimacy between people and land, rooted in personal memory and her immigrant experience, and centers on community through public art interventions and transdisciplinary knowledge exchange. Most often, Arocha’s works vivify and reconstruct the vulnerable tropical forests of her homeland, confronting the ecological, emotional, and cultural loss caused by extractive economies and colonial practices. In weaving together historical and contemporary technologies, Arocha’s unconventional process and craft express her layered relationship with nature and cultural transformation.
Arocha was recently awarded a NYSCA Artist Grant, was a MacDowell Fellow in 2023, and was the recipient of the Annual Award for Excellence in Design by the Public Design Commission of the City of New York, 2024—artist in residency at Residency Unlimited and Santa Fe Art Institute. Past residencies include The Lower East Side Printshop, LABverde, Sinfonia Tropico, and The Wassaic Project. Arocha has received funding from The Sustainable Arts Foundation, Brooklyn Arts Council, and City Artist Corps, and was the recipient of the Brookfield Place New York Annual Arts Commission and the FST StudioProjects Fund.
Solo exhibitions include Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling, BioBAT Project Space, Queens Botanical Garden, and site-specific installations at Brooklyn Public Library, BRIC, Brookfield Place/Winter Garden, MTA Arts, Goethe-Institut Kolumbien, and Hilton Bogota Corferias. She has participated in group exhibitions at PS122, Smack Mellon, Wave Hill, BRIC, The Wassaic Project, ArtBridge, KODALab, and The Clemente.
Click here to listen to the artist’s interview where she talks about her site-specific installations at Brookfield Place New York.
Tatiana Arocha was one of five artists participating in the 2023 New York City-Based Artist Residency, dedicated to supporting the voices of underrepresented artists in NYC who identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Color and whose research-based practices fill in gaps in historical knowledge. The program was organized by Guest Curator Rachel Gugelberger.
The 2023 NYC-Based Artist Residency Program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the city council.
