Artist Talk

Mika Tajima

November 5, 2026
4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

A woman walks by a series of six woven panels in a gallery. The works feature mostly dual-tone gradients.
Mika Tajima, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Negative Entropy (installation view), 2012. Cotton, wood, acoustic baffling felt, 27 x 35 ½ inches each. Photo credit: Constance Mensh.

Join us for this artist talk with multidisciplinary visual artist Mika Tajima, co-presented by Bryn Mawr College Department of History of Art and The Fabric Workshop and Museum. Both a Bryn Mawr College alumna (Class of 1997) and former FWM Artist-in-Residence (2012), Tajima will share her artistic practice with students and the public, including Negative Entropy, a series of six woven acoustic portraits developed during her FWM residency. Drawing on recordings from Pennsylvania textile industries and contemporary data centers, the project transforms industrial sounds into Jacquard-woven acoustic panels, exploring the intersections of technology, labor, and material production.

Organized in conjunction with You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry.

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Event Information

November 5, 2026
4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

Bryn Mawr College
Rhys Carpenter Library, Room B-21
101 N. Merion Ave., Bryn Mawr, PA 19010

Maps

Free and open to the public
No advance registration required

About the Participants

American, born 1975. Lives and works in New York, NY.

Mika Tajima received her MFA in 2003 from Columbia University, School of the Arts, New York, NY. After completing her BA in Fine Arts and East Asian Studies in 1997 from Bryn Mawr College, she became an Apprentice in the Post-Graduate Apprentice Program at The Fabric Workshop and Museum. In 2011, Tajima was invited to join FWM as an Artist-in-Residence, 14 years after her original apprenticeship. Tajima’s artistic practice translates extensive research of socio-political and theoretical concepts into physical objects through sculpture, painting, and installation. Her extensive solo exhibitions have been shown at the Kitchen, New York (2008); Seattle Art Museum (2011); Sculpture Center, New York (2016) and Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul (2018). Her collaborative work has been featured in The Pedestrians with Charles Atlas at the South London Gallery, UK (2011); Today is Not a Dress Rehearsal with Charles Atlas and New Humans at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA (2009); and the Whitney Biennial (2008).