Four Artists

Emily Weiskopf (b. Syracuse, New York) is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and researcher based in Connecticut. She received a BFA from the Hartford Art School (CT) and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture (Philadelphia/Rome, Italy). Weiskopf’s work has been featured in Artnet, Gallerist NY, and The Brooklyn Rail, and has been exhibited with M. David & Co. (NY); Spring Projects (NY), Shin Gallery (NY), Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and White Columns, among others. She was nominated for the Rome Prize in 2011 and awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center (2011, 2021), the Wassaic Project (2012), the Atlantic Center for the Arts (2023), and ECOCA (2024). In 2021, she was among the ReClaim Award winners in Cologne, Germany. She is currently developing a permanent public artwork for the City of Austin, Texas, scheduled to debut in Fall 2025. Weiskopf serves as Chair of the Curatorial Committee at the Ely Center for Contemporary Art and lectures at the Hartford Art School (University of Hartford).

Tau Lewis (b. 1993, Toronto) is an artist who lives and works in New York. Lewis uses intricate craft processes to transform found textiles into monumental artworks, building a unique iconography informed by African diasporic communities in an act of agency, resistance, and healing. Lewis employs the conceptual possibilities of textiles and their real and imagined lineages—considering the past lives of the materials and how their history manifests in their physicality—as a regenerative process through which to examine identity, the body, interdependence, and shared histories. Lewis transforms these recycled materials into large-scale figurative works and likens the practice of upcycling to African diasporic methods of art-making and survival, situating her work within the deep history, vibrant present, and oracular future of Black cultural production.

Chiharu Shiota, born in Osaka in 1972 and based in Berlin, draws inspiration from personal experiences and emotions, exploring universal themes such as life, death, and relationships. Through immersive thread installations enveloping everyday objects like shoes, keys, and dresses, she investigates the idea of “presence in absence,” conveying intangible emotions in sculptures, drawings, performance videos, and photographs. Awarded the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists in Japan (2008), Shiota’s work has been showcased in prominent institutions globally, including the Grand Palais, Paris (2024), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2023), ZKM, Karlsruhe (2021), and Gropius Bau, Berlin (2019). She has participated in notable exhibitions like the Sydney Biennale (2016) and represented Japan at the Venice Biennale (2015).