ABOUT
Tanja Geis’ site-responsive practice spans drawing, installation, and sculpture, emerging from deep research and physical encounters with edge ecosystems and species disrupted by human activity. The unseen ocean and the coast as threshold recur as potent spaces for this inquiry.
Geis’ process begins with extensive research and time spent physically engaging with a place or species. The experiences, materials, artifacts, and imagery she collects during this phase guide the creative trajectory. Foraged materials are incorporated as tactile indices of place and history, and repetitive accumulation of marks and objects generate emergent patterns that draw viewers into curious, unsettled, and intimate seeing. Geis is guided by the question: What new ways of seeing might help us live with grace, curiosity, and care in the mongrel ruins of our own creation?
Geis is a Hong Kong-born and raised visual artist based in Oakland. She has exhibited with the FOR-SITE Foundation, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, the San Jose Museum of Art, and venues in Iceland, Scotland, England, Hong Kong, and Japan. She has participated in artist residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Kala Art Institute. Geis holds an MFA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley, an MA in Marine Management from the University of Akureyri, Iceland, and a BA in Fine Art from Yale University.