Saturday June 6, 2026 | 2:00 – 4:00pm
Location: RU House at Colonels Row, Building #404B on Governors Island (map)
Ferry information | Video directions
Free Workshop
Limited to 12 participants. RSVP required.
In this workshop, led by Tatiana Arocha (2023 NYCBAR/RU alum), participants will work directly with plants and surrounding surfaces found on the grounds of Governors Island through clay impressions and graphite rubbings.
By touching, observing, and transferring textures from leaves, bark, soil, and built materials, they create prints and impressions that capture traces of the environment.
No prior experience is necessary and all materials are provided.
About
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.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
RU is grateful for the partnership with Governors Island Arts.
