Mika Tajima

Mika Tajima’s (b. 1975 Los Angeles, California) practice materializes techniques developed to shape the physicality, productivity, and desires of the human body. Her sculptures, paintings, videos, and installations focus on the embodied experience of ortho-architectonic control and computational life. From architectural systems to ergonomic design to psychographic data, Tajima’s works operate in the space between the immaterial and the tangible to create heightened encounters that target the senses and emotions of the viewer, underlining the dynamics of control and agency. Tajima’s early investigation into the regulatory and relational structures of human bodies in built environments would eventually lead to her explorations into the role of human labor in industrial and digital automation. Negative Entropy (2010–present) comprises abstract woven portraits of field recordings of production noise at industrial textile factories and data centers, in addition to human voices. Tajima’s latest works integrate ancient practices with electromagnetic energy to penetrate the psyche as well as control, regulate, and augment one’s mental state through the body. Since 2014, the artist has incorporated bronze jet nozzles in her practice, alluding to pressure points used in acupuncture and the unseen flow of energy that connects and exerts force upon us. 

Tajima lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Selected exhibitions include Æther at Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; TOUCHLESS, Taro Nasu Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Dirty Protests, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Programmed, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; COLORI, Castello di Rivoli and GAM, Torino, Italy; All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; Meridian (Gold), Sculpture Center, New York, NY. Public collections include Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Albright-Know Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.