Tomie Arai is a public artist who collaborates with local communities to create visual narratives that give meaning to the spaces we live in. Through a framework of collaboration, Arai uses the specificity of her experience as an Asian American as a social space in which to investigate themes of migration, displacement, and cultural equity.
Arai has received awards for visual art from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the NY Foundation for the Art. She was a recipient of an Anonymous Was A Woman Award, a 2016 National Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art and two Asian Women’s Giving Circle Art & Activism Grants. In 2019, she received a Headlands Center for the Arts McLaughlin Award for Social Practice.
Ms. Arai has designed both temporary and permanent public works of art for Creative Time, the US General Services Administration Art in Architecture Program, the NYC PerCent for Art Program, the MTA Arts for Transit Program, The National Endowment, and the SF Arts Commission. She is a co-founder of the cultural collective, The Chinatown Art Brigade, which has received support from A Blade of Grass, the LMCC Creative Engagement Program and the Laundromat Project.
