Posted by Jerry Phillips on Thursday, October 16, 2025 in News, Space 204, Spotlight, Studio VU.
On November 5, 2025, the Vanderbilt University Department of Art welcomes Tara Tamaribuchi to campus as the next Studio VU Lecture Series visiting artist.
Tamaribuchi is an artist working in Seattle, Washington where she investigates human life experiences in an organic unfolding art practice. She enters artmaking from a Buddhist and diasporic perspective with an interest in impermanence and connecting the past, present and future. Recent projects connect Japanese-American incarceration history to US xenophobic policy today while memorializing Gen-X rave and club culture and questioning the norms of colonial collections of material culture.
Her recent exhibitions include shows at Tlaxcala3 (Mexico City Art Week), Jack Straw Cultural Center (Seattle), Carnation Contemporary (Portland, OR), Seattle Art Fair (Vestibule Gallery), UW Jacob Lawrence Gallery (Seattle), Method Gallery (Seattle), Seattle University Hedreen Gallery, Eastover Contemporary Arts (Lenox, MA), and Galpão (São Paulo, Brazil).
Tamaribuchi has been working to realize more tangible outcomes through creative placekeeping via a nonprofit she founded, Friends of Inscape, to save Seattle’s largest art studio building and former immigration and detention center from redevelopment. In that effort, she curated the 2025 group exhibition, Eight Years: Finding Resistance and Belonging in the Historic Immigration Building, at ARTS at King Street Station. She is a member of SOIL Artist-Run Gallery, which is celebrating its 30th year as an experimental art space. Tara earned a BA in Journalism from George Washington University, BFA in Painting from Pacific Northwest College of Art, and MFA from Lesley Art and Design. She currently lives and works in Seattle, WA.
Studio VU Lecture with Visiting Artist Tara Tamaribuchi Date: Wednesday,November 5, 2025 Time: 4:10pm Venue: Room 220, E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center (EBI Studio Arts) 1204 25th Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37240 Website: as.vanderbilt.edu/art; taratamaribuchi.com Instagram: @vanderbilt.art
The Department of Art annually invites national and international voices in creative, curatorial, and critical-thought fields to the Vanderbilt campus through the Studio VU Lecture Series. Each visiting lecturer has a recognized career in visual arts, performance art, art criticism, and/or a combination. In addition to giving a lecture, the visiting speaker conducts one-on-one critiques with senior art major students.
The Studio VU Lecture Series began in 2007 initiated by Mel Ziegler, Professor of Art emeritus.. The Department of Art would like to thank all collaborators, cosponsors, and community members for their continued support for the Studio VU program.
All lectures are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted.