Tania L. Balan-Gaubert

Artist Statement: Lenapehoking-based (New York) interdisciplinary conceptual artist, curator, and writer Tania L. Balan-Gaubert’s work explores race, transnational identity, culture, and belonging through photography, mixed media, installation, and video. Born on Council of the Three Fires and Miami lands (Illinois) to Haitian parents, Balan-Gaubert was raised between Chicago’s southside and the Flatlands neighborhood of Brooklyn on Lenapehoking land. Guided by Haitian, African, and Indigenous-based cultural traditions, Balan-Gaubert creates works that are caught between several realms. She combines personal stories, folklore, images, found and ready-made objects, spirituality, and lore with craft materials to construct hybrid works. Balan-Gaubert earned her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2018 and her MA in African American Studies from Columbia University in 2012. She has exhibited in San Francisco at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), SOMArts Cultural Center, and in Brooklyn at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MoCADA), the CaribBEING House in residence at the Brooklyn Museum, and the Lefferts Historic House in Prospect Park. Balan-Gaubert is the co-founder of 5/5 Collective, a multimedia group dedicated to exploring Black(ness) as an idea, consciousness, reference, and embodied experience through space, language, and visual culture.

Portfolio Images