Tatiana Arocha is a Colombian artist born in New York in 1974, whose practice explores the intimacy between people and the land, personal memory, and her own experience as an immigrant.

A graduate of the Graphic Design Department at Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Bogotá and the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, Arocha’s work reconstructs Colombia’s tropical forests, addressing the ecological, emotional, and cultural losses caused by extractive economies and colonial practices. The coca leaf has been central to her artistic research: through her work, she delves into the ancestral and rural knowledge associated with the plant, often in contrast to the distorted perception projected onto it by Western narratives.

For over a decade, Arocha has researched the processes of colonization and exploitation of the coca plant by European powers, analyzing its visual presence throughout history and in advertising. Through dialogue with Indigenous knowledge keepers from the Amazon, and often working directly with the coca plant—its textures and fibers—her practice proposes a de-cocainization of the plant, seeking to understand it beyond its association with narcotics production. Her work highlights the complexity of the ancestral knowledge surrounding coca, emphasizing the role of both urban and rural women in preserving this knowledge and transforming the stigma attached to the plant.

In 2023, Arocha was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship, the Annual Award for Excellence in Design from the Public Design Commission of the City of New York, and a residency at Residency Unlimited. In 2024, shewas an artist-in-residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute. Previous residencies include The Lower East Side Printshop, LABverde, Sinfonía Trópico, and The Wassaic Project.

Arocha has received support from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Brooklyn Arts Council, and City Artist Corps, and was the recipient of the Brookfield Place New York Annual Arts Commission and the FST StudioProjects Fund.

Her solo exhibitions include presentations at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling, BioBAT Project Space, and the Queens Botanical Garden, as well as site-specific installations at BRIC, Brookfield Place/Winter Garden, MTA Arts, the Goethe-Institut Kolumbien, and Hilton Bogotá Corferias. She has also participated in group exhibitions at PS122, Smack Mellon, Wave Hill, BRIC, The Wassaic Project, ArtBridge, KODALab, and The Clemente.