Tia Salmela Keobounpheng is an interdisciplinary artist based in North Minneapolis. Her work merges fiber, metal, and drawing techniques to create sculpture, installation, public art and mixed-media compositions that express a personal reckoning. Her process-based practice explores the complexity of identity through ancestry, forces of assimilation, and the experiential memory within the physical body.
Her solo exhibition DEFUSE was on view in the summer of 2021 at the Duluth Art Institute. Her temporary outdoor public art installation, UNWEAVING, was installed in Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis in February 2021 as part of The Great Northern Festival and in Sister Cities Park in Duluth in the Fall of 2020 as part of a MN State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. Her work has also been exhibited at the New Studio Gallery in St. Paul, the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, and the Finlandia University Gallery in Hancock, Michigan. She holds a BA degree in Architecture from the University of MN and studied as an exchange student in Oulu, Finland - the land of her ancestors.
