Biography
Tara de la Garza is an Irish/Australian/American artist whose work has been exhibited extensively across the United States in museums and galleries including MASS MoCA, the Art Institute of Chicago, Cornell University, the San Diego Art Institute, Palo Alto Art Center, Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, SF Design Week, Spring/Break Art Show in LA and NYC, and Context Miami. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Watson Library in New York. She has presented two solo exhibitions at The Lodge Gallery in NYC.
De la Garza was a founding curator of No Longer Empty, the New York-based initiative that transformed unused storefronts into exhibition spaces and featured artists such as Yoko Ono. She also ran her own experimental gallery in New York, where she exhibited Indigenous Australian artist Tracey Moffatt, who later represented Australia at the Venice Biennale. After relocating to California, she founded The Frank in Redwood City, a contemporary art pop-up that showcased significant Bay Area artists.
She is currently the Creative Director of the nonprofit Inventurous and serves as a Public Art Commissioner in Palo Alto, CA. De la Garza studied Fine Art at Curtin University in Western Australia and is presently a resident artist at the Cubberley Artist Studio Program in Palo Alto. She has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant through Chashama NYC.
Statement
Environmental justice and stewardship of the planet are central to Tara de la Garza’s art practice. She reveals the stories embedded in our collective consumption, specifically of single use plastic. She delves into the archaeology of contemporary waste materials.
Her minimalist forms contain a maximalist aesthetic of excess. Textures fashioned from the detritus of our community and molding into concrete cylinders and lights. Influenced by minimalist and constructivist artists such as Dan Flavin, Eva Hesse, Vladimir Tatlin, and contemporary artists Rachel Whiteread and Eva Rothschild, de la Garza’s ‘Monumental’ projects continue a practice of reusing materials and referencing modernist forms.
Exhibitions
2026 Group Show 'Held/Together', Dominican University, San Rafael, CA
2026 Group Show 'Invisible Dog Goes for a Walk, Buoy Art Centre, Tokyo, Japan
2026 Group Show ' Arthropods', Felix Kulpa, Santa Cruz, CA
2025 Group Show 'Cut from the Same Cloth', Palo Alto Art Center, CA
2024 Solo Show 'Mining the Plastocene', Felix Kulpa Gallery, Santa Cruz, CA
2024 Group Show "Synthetic Nature', Upstart Modern, Sausalito, CA
2024 Group Show ‘Illuminating Perspectives’, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, CA
2023 Solo Artist Spotlight, Spring/Break, NYC
2023 Solo Show, Terracycle Residency, Trenton NJ
2023 Group Show ‘Earth’ Palo Alto Arts Center CA
2023 Group Show ‘Pyramid Scheme’ Bass and Reiner, SF
2023 2 person show ‘Naked Lunch’, Spring/Break LA
2022 Group Show, Silicon Valley Sculpture Fair, Bay Area, SF
2022 Art Market SF, bG Gallery, Art Fair
2022 3 person show ‘At Stake’, Spring/Break LA
2022 Solo showcase ‘Focus on Form’ as part of Intersect Palm Springs
2021 Context Art Miami, bG Gallery, Miami
2021 Group Show, Weave, Bundle, Cut and Layer, Root Division, SF
2021 Public Art Commission ‘Social Distancing Stools’ Rinconada Park, Palo Alto CA
2021 Solo Show, “Sequestered’ Universally Unknown, LA online thru Topia
2021 Group Show, ‘Dream State’ Museum of Northern California (MONCA)
2020 Group Show, ‘Art in the Time of Corona’ NUMU, Los Gatos
2020 Group Show, ‘Art/World Australia’, bG Gallery, LA
2020 Group Show ‘Silicon Valley Sculpture’ Menlo College, CANN
2020 Solo Show ‘Monuments to the Plastocene IV’ Art Kiosk RWC, CA
2020 Group Show, Doom and Bloom, West Windsor Arts Center, NJ
2019 Group Show, Palace of Fine Arts, SF, Message in a Bottle, Surfrider Foundation
2019 San Francisco Design Week, Design Hub installation, SF
2019 Group Show ‘Spring Haiku’, Flatfile Gallery, NYC
2018 Group Show, Paper Cuts: Large Scale Collage, Palo Alto Arts Center, CA
2017 ‘Yellow Chair Extra’, DAVID&SCHWEITZER Contemporary NY
2017 Solo Show at The Lodge Gallery, NYC ‘Unnatural Selection’
2017 San Diego Art Institute ‘Diverge/Convene’ Group show + workshop
2016 Solo projection ‘(; wink)’ The Great Wall of Oakland, Oakland SF
2016 Group Show ‘Nothing is Here; Dada is its Name’, Redwood City SF
2015 Group Show ‘New Paintings’, Aggregate Space Gallery
2014 Solo Show at The Lodge Gallery, NYC ‘Embracing Failure’
2013 2 Person show ‘Cinderscape’, Aggregate Space Gallery, Oakland SF
2012 Group Show, ‘Dia de los Muertos’, Arts Council of Princeton, NJ
2012 2 Person Show with Amanda Browder, ‘What Could You Do Here?’ Chashama, NYC
2011 Group Show ‘Town & Country’ 320 Studios, NYC
2011 Group Show ‘ArtJam’, Homefront ArtSpace, Princeton NJ
2011 MASS MOCA ‘An Exchange with Sol LeWitt’ North Adams, Massachusetts
2011 Group Show ‘Art for Soul’ A Gallery, NYC
2011 Book Launch’RIPE:conception and perception’ Allegra LaViola Gallery NYC
2010 Fremantle Arts Festival ‘Drawn Together’ Moores Building of Contemporary Art, Australia
2010 2 Person show ‘RIPE:conception and perception’ Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ
2010 Group Show ‘Exquisite Salvage’ incomplete. 210 Clinton St,NYC- 2ONETWO
2010 Group Show ‘the possibility of a painting, Gallery Suite, Chelsea Hotel NYC
2009 Solo Show ‘By the Light’ 223 East Broadway, NYC
2009 Group Show ‘No Longer Empty’ storefronts at Chelsea Hotel, NYC
2009 Group Show ‘Figment’ Governor’s Island NYC
2009 Group Show ‘World Of Imagination’, APW Gallery, NYC
2008 Group Show, Umbrella Arts, NYC
2008 Solo Installation ‘The Clubhouse’ Agni Gallery residency, NYC
2008 Group Show ‘Movement, Color and Light', Reflect Arts, NYC
2008 Group Show ‘Dada Art Fair’ Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
2007 Group Show ‘Mail/Art Global Collaborative Massive” ABC No Rio, NYC
Press
Bibliography
2025 'Mining the Plastocene', Patricia Albers
2023 'No Longer Empty, Building Art and Community in Unused Spaces', Manon Slome
2011 'An Exchange with Sol Lewitt' Cabinet Magazine, Mass MoCa
2011 'RIPE:conception and perception' Aferro Gallery
2007 'Ides of March' ABC No Rio