About the Artist
Lives and works in Berlin
2024
Ph.D. in German Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA; Dissertation: Painting and Writing with the Camera: The Artistic Processes of Gerhard Richter and W. G. Sebald
2015
M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA; Master’s thesis: The Poetics of Destruction: A Compendium of Ruins and Ruin Flowers
2013
M.F.A. in Studio Art, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, USA
2010
B.F.A. in Studio Art, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA
2001-6
Fashion photographer; represented by Shotview Photographers Management, Vienna, from 2003 until 2006: see www.archive.tinatahir.com
2001
Certificate in Professional Photographic Practice, London College of Communication (then: London College of Printing), London, UK
Born 1973 in Ulm, Germany
Artist Statement
My work is shaped by questions of representation, perception, and the fleeting. I frequently explore these phenomena through the projection of semblance. Images are not what they seem. What looks like a string of pearls, upon closer inspection, reveals itself as a chain of bombs, tanks, and hand grenades. Powdered carpets made of soil or pigment are carried across the room on the soles of viewers’ shoes. Floral baroque frames, abandoned by their images, surrender to horror vacui, as flowers spread their claws beyond the frame into the vacant space.
My ongoing body of work, Halftone Images / Rasterbilder (begun in 2022), explores the disintegration of images into unstable, algorithmic patterns derived from halftone techniques. “Half” conjures not just an equal part of a whole, but a threshold state—partial, fragmented, hovering between black and white, presence and absence. The gray tones in these images are not real, but optical illusions that arise in the viewer’s eye, directing attention to what is missing—to the gap between perception and representation. Shaped by data loss, compression, and visual interference, these low-resolution sources often seem mechanically generated and are easily mistaken for digital or screen prints. Yet what appears automated is the result of slow, deliberate, pixel-by-pixel manual labor—an attempt to challenge the precision of the machine by hand, producing imperfections as a signum of the humane.
What interests me is the tension within this perceptual ambiguity: the image both dissolves and coheres, for it is only at a distance that the viewer is able to “complete” the picture. In the most recent works, I have begun to push this visual erosion even further, to the point where the image begins to abandon its own internal logic.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2024
Ebony & Ivory, artnow gallery, Berlin, DE
2022
Strich um Strich. Zeichnen 2, GalerieEtage, Museum Reinickendorf, Berlin, DE
Neue Kunstwerke der Graphothek Berlin, Berlin, DE
2021
Schwarzweiß – Weißschwarz, BEGE Galerien, Ulm, DE
Fressen, Verein Berliner Künstler, Berlin, DE
2020
Begegnungen, Rathaus-Galerie Reinickendorf, Berlin, DE
2018
Reminiscence, Lonsdale Gallery, Toronto, CA
2017
Flatfiles, Goldfinch Gallery, Chicago, IL, USA
Crystal Carpet, Armani Hotel, Burj Khalifa, Dubai, UAE
The Conditions of Production, Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery, Athens, GR
Climbing Vines on a Random Wall, Hangar Artistic Research Center, Lisbon, PT
2016
The Particular Poetics of Things, Goldfinch Gallery, Chicago, IL, USA
Institutional Garbage, Sector 2337, Chicago, IL, USA
Arte Laguna Prize, Arsenale, Finalist (Sculpture), Venice, IT
New Materiality, The Project Space, The Banff Centre, Banff, CA
2015
Aqua Art Miami, ArtSlant Prize 2015, 2nd Prize, Miami, FL, USA
Front & Center, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL, USA
ACERBUNUNDRUM, Ballroom Projects, Chicago, IL, USA
Ground Floor, Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery (HPAC), Chicago, IL, USA
DOUBLE CHERRY, Threewalls, Chicago, IL, USA
How To Disappear, Paul Watkins Gallery, Winona, MN, USA
2013
12 Theses, Mana Contemporary, Chicago, IL, USA
Erasure, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, WI, USA
Leftovers, University of Illinois at Chicago, IL, USA
A Strange House in My Voice, Gallery 400, Chicago, IL, USA
2010
Shadows, SCA Contemporary Art & Artlab, Albuquerque, NM, USA
2007
Musen—Modelle—Malerlegenden—von Renoir bis Warhol, Rechberghausen, DE
2006
Ménage à deux, Elvira Bach und Tina Tahir, Kunstkabinett, Regensburg, DE
2004
Floral, Galerie Viaux, Hamburg, DE
Europäische Kunst in der SüdWest Kurve, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, DE
Solo exhibitions
2024
Von der Lust an Verwandlung, BEGE Galerien Ulm, DE
2017
Editions – Selected Works, Galerie am Dom, Wetzlar, DE
2016
Botany of Desire, Gallery 2, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL, USA
2014
Tapestries, BEGE Galerien. Ulm, DE
2012
Galerie Domberger, Editionen Tina Tahir. Filderstadt, DE
2010
Entfernung- Distance/Erasure, John Sommers Gallery. Albuquerque, NM, USA
2005
Drawn to Photography, BEGE Galerien Ulm, DE
2003
Fotografie-Illustration, BEGE Galerien Ulm, DE
Books
2024
Painting and Writing with the Camera: The Artistic Processes of Gerhard Richter and W. G. Sebald (PhD Dissertation)
2015
The Poetics of Destruction (MA Thesis)
39 Future Memories
2014
Footnotes on a Conscious Act of Erasure
Grants & Fellowships
2024
Rackham Humanities Research Fellowship, University of Michigan
2022
FU Sturm Fellowship, FU Berlin / University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2015
Field Trip/Field Notes/Field Guide, Intercollegiate, Transdisciplinary Consortium (U of C, UIC, SAIC)
George H. Roeder Fellowship, Visual and Critical Studies, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
City of Chicago’s DCASE, Individual Artists Program (IAP)
Creative Projects Grant Award, Illinois Arts Council, Chicago
Hyde Park Art Center Program Fellowship, Chicago
2014
Foundation for Contemporary Arts New York, emergency grant, New York