Mika Tajima (born 1975 in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

) is a New York-based artist who employs sculpture, painting, media installation, and performance in her conceptual practice.

Education

Tajima earned a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

degree in

Fine Arts In European academic traditions, fine art (or, fine arts) is made primarily for aesthetics or creativity, creative expression, distinguishing it from popular art, decorative art or applied art, which also either serve some practical function ...

and

East Asian Studies East Asian studies is a distinct multidisciplinary field of scholarly enquiry and education that promotes a broad humanistic understanding of East Asia past and present. The field includes the study of the region's culture, written language, histo ...

from

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh language, Welsh: ) is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as a ...

in 1997, and a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admi ...

graduate degree from the

Columbia University School of the Arts The Columbia University School of the Arts (also known as School of the Arts or SoA) is the fine arts graduate school of Columbia University in Morningside Heights, New York (state), New York. It offers Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degrees in Film, ...

in 2003. That year she was also a Post-Graduate Apprentice at

The Fabric Workshop and Museum The Fabric Workshop and Museum, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a non-profit arts organization devoted to creating new work in new materials and new media in collaboration with emerging, nationally, and internationally recognized artis ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

Work

Tajima's practice materializes techniques developed to shape the physicality, productivity, and desires of the human body. Her work relates performance, control, and freedom to the embodied experience of architectonic and computational life. Her early installations and collaborative work explored performance in relation to the built environment. Using the music recording studio, film production set, industrial factory, data centers, and office work environment as production sites, Tajima examined how these spaces shape our activities and bodies. In each project, the performing subject confronts determined situations and seeks new possibilities through modes of non-performance and autonomy. Her other work draws on technologies used to control and affect the human body and mind. This includes techniques that shape psychological desires and our experience of space and time. “From architectural systems to ergonomic design to psychographic data, her works operate in the space between the transient and the tangible, and highlight the complex networks of power and submission that we experience in relationship to our physical bodies and virtual selves.” Through a residency at the Fabric Workshop, Tajima developed her Negative Entropy woven portrait series in which she focused on mechanical textile production, in particular the development of the Jacquard loom, as a technology linked to these early modes of industry, but also one that developed into our current age of computing and information management. ''Meridian'' (2016), was developed using sentiment analysis and prediction technology, where the light sculpture responds in real time to the collective mood of a population expressed on live Twitter feeds from a particular geographic region, such as

Istanbul Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...

. Her exhibitions include ''Disassociate'' (2007), ''The Double'' (2008), and ''Negative Entropy'' (2014).

Collaboration

In 2003, she co-founded New Humans, a collaborative group including then-artists Eric Tsai and her now-husband Howie Chen to make works involving sound, installation, and performance actions. "New Humans" is a moniker for Tajima's projects with other musicians, artists and designers. Collaborators for New Humans performances and projects include

Vito Acconci Vito Acconci (, ; January 24, 1940 – April 27, 2017) was an American performance art, performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His performan ...

Charles Atlas Charles Atlas (born Angelo Siciliano; October 30, 1892December 24, 1972) was an American bodybuilder best remembered as the developer of a bodybuilding method and its associated exercise program which spawned a landmark advertising campaign ...

Judith Butler Judith Pamela Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American feminist philosopher and gender studies scholar whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory. In ...

, John Smith and

C. Spencer Yeh Burning Star Core is the experimental music project of violinist C. Spencer Yeh. Originally conceived 1993 in Cincinnati, the project is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Composing music that's driven by his violin, Yeh's Burning Star Core p ...

, among others.

Awards

In 2007 she received an Artadia Award.

References

External links

*
New Humans
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tajima, Mika Artists from Los Angeles Bryn Mawr College alumni Columbia University School of the Arts alumni 1975 births Living people