Athena LaTocha

Athena LaTocha (BFA 1992) is an artist whose massive works on paper explore the relationship between human-made and natural worlds in the wake of Earthworks artists from the 1960s and 1970s. The artist incorporates materials such as ink, lead, earth, and wood while looking at correlations between mark-marking and displacement of materials made by industrial equipment and natural events. Her works are inspired by her upbringing in the wilderness of Alaska. LaTocha’s process is about being immersed in these environments while responding to the storied and, at times, traumatic cultural histories that are rooted in place.

LaTocha’s work has been shown across the country in places such as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico; CUE Art Foundation and Artists Space, New York; South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, South Dakota; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, Alaska; Smack Mellon and BRIC House in Brooklyn, New York; and MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, New York. Currently, her work is on view at JDJ Tribeca in Manhattan and at The Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

LaTocha is the recipient of artist grants, residencies, and awards, among them the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Pocantico Prize for Visual Artists in 2022; the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship; the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Painting; the National Academy Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 2021, and more recognition from the Joan Mitchell Foundation in 2019 and 2016, Wave Hill in 2018, CUE Art Foundation in 2015, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in 2013. 

Presented in partnership with SAIC Alumni Engagement. 

View the Athena LaTocha SAIC Flaxman Library Resource Guide for additional information about the artist.