Bio & CV

Tatiana Arocha (1974) 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. 

In 2023, Arocha was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship, an Annual Award for Excellence in Design by the Public Design Commission of the City of New York, and a residency at Residency Unlimited. In 2024, she will be a resident at the 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 Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling, BioBAT Project Space, Queens Botanical Garden, and site-specific installations at 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.

Arocha studied illustration and graphic design in Bogotá, Colombia. From 2000-2008, she was owner/curator of Servicio Ejecutivo, a digital-turned-physical gallery in Brooklyn.

Please contact me to say hi, ask a question, or inquire about my work.

PRESS

Marcela Vallejo, “La belleza que encontré en las hojas de coca,” Vist Projects, 2022.
Katie White, “Artist Tatiana Arocha Hopes to Spark Questions Around Sustainability With Her Rainforest Installation in Lower Manhattan,” Artnet Gallery Network, 2022.
Tatiane Santa Rosa, “Subversive Kin: The Act Of Turning Over,” Latinx Spaces, November 2021
Karen Rojas, “La artista que plasma en sus obras ecosistemas vulnerables de Colombia,” El Espectador, July 20, 2020.
Hovey Brock, “Tatiana Arocha: Respiro un bosque/I breathe a forest,” The Brooklyn Rail, July 2020.
María Fernanda Mancera, “Entrelazándome con el territorio: La invención de la naturaleza en la obra de Tatiana Arocha,” Revista Exclama, 2020.
Hall W. Rockefeller, “A Forest Grows in Sugar Hill,” LessThanHalf.org, April 2, 2020.
Andrés Osorio Guillott, “Del barro, una tinta; de la semilla, una brocha,” El Espectador, October 22, 2019.
Allison Meier, “Art Responding to Birds and Their Habitats at One of New York’s Great Natural Escapes,” Hyperallergic, May 29, 2018.
Erica Langston, “Why Are Tropical Birds Popping Up All Over Brooklyn?” Audubon, May 23, 2016.

AFFILIATIONS

Sinfonía Trópico
Art Directors Club 50/50 Initiative