Athena LaTocha - Artist

MFA Fine Arts presents a talk by Athena LaTocha.
Athena LaTocha (b. Anchorage, Alaska) is an artist whose massive works on paper explore the relationship between human-made and natural worlds, in the wake of Earthworks artists from the 1960s and 1970s. The artist incorporates materials such as ink, lead, earth and wood, while looking at correlations between mark-marking and displacement of materials made by industrial equipment and natural events. Her works are informed by her upbringing in the wilderness of Alaska. LaTocha’s process is about being immersed in these environments, while responding to the storied and, at times, traumatic histories that are rooted in place.
Her work has been shown across the country in places such as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas; IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico; MoMA P.S.1 in New York; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana; and the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, Alaska. Currently, LaTocha has work on view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia; The Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York; and the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina.
LaTocha is the recipient of artist grants and awards, among them the St. Gaudens Memorial Fellowship (2023); Rockefeller Brothers Fund Pocantico Art Prize in Visual Arts (2022); Eiteljorg Fellowship, the National Academy Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, and NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Painting (2021); Joan Mitchell Foundation (2019, 2016); Wave Hill (2018); and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (2013). Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Art in America, The Art Newspaper, BOMB and Hyperallergic. LaTocha received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Stony Brook University, New York. The artist divides her time between New York City and Peekskill, New York.
Talks is a series of lectures by artists, writers and critics presented by MFA Fine Arts. Talks are held on Tuesdays at 3:00pm at 133 West 21st Street in Room 101C and on Zoom. Participation in the Q&A is limited to MFA Fine Arts students attending the lecture in person.
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