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.

Arocha was recently awarded an NYSCA Artist Grant, was a MacDowell Fellow in 2023, and received the Annual Award for Excellence in Design from the Public Design Commission of the City of New York in 2024. She has been an artist-in-residence at Residency Unlimited and the Santa Fe Art Institute. In 2025, her artist book Descocainizar la Coca / Decocainizing Coca, co-authored with anthropologist Marcela Vallejo, was published by Editorial Universidad del Cauca and Corónica Editorial. 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.

Her permanent public commissions in New York City include Selva Adentro at the Cypress Hills subway station (MTA Arts and Design) and The Hawk and The Heron (NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program). 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, 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.