Christine Tarkowski is a Chicago based artist who works in a variety of mediums including sculpture, printed matter, photography, and song. Her works range in scale. Her works range in scale from the ordinary to the monumental in the form of permanent architectural structures, cast models, textile yardage, and temporary printed ephemera. Many of her recent works point towards the odds and ends of Western culture relative to systems of democracy, religion, and capitalism.
Her solo exhibitions include Whale Oil, Slave Ships & Burning Martyrs at Priska Juschka Fine Art in New York, Imitatio Dei at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and Last Things Will Be First and First Things Will Be Last at the Chicago Cultural Center. She has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Socrates Sculpture Park, Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design, RISD Museum, and The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu. She has created commissioned projects for the Manilow Sculpture Park at Governor’s State University, Mass MoCA, Public Art/City of Chicago, and Franconia Sculpture Park. She currently is an Associate Professor in the Fiber and Material Studies Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been the recipient of grants from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Creative Capital Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council and awarded residencies at the Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, J.M. Kohler Arts in Industry. She is currently an Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, Columbia College Chicago/3 Arts 2010 Fellow.