Tara Mateik - Alumni

Tara Mateik is an artist and educator living in New York City.

Entering both political and biological cells as an ersatz scientist, his work critically explores the gendered signifiers and codes of these fantastic mythologies through performance, video, and intervention.

As the founder of the Society for Biological Insurgents, or SBI (pronounced /spi/), an embryonic cell organization that seeks to overthrow institutions of compulsory gender, Mateik released mutinous biological agents in his work. Mateik’s radical passion is partly inspired by his celebrated work with Paper Tiger Television, a well-established non-profit video collective. As Coordinating Director at PTTV Mateik advocated for alternative media production and distribution initiatives that worked to demystify and democratize media. His video works include Toilet Training: Law and Order and in the Bathroom (with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project), Operation Invert and PYT.

Mateik’s writing and work has been published in Felix: A Journal of Media Arts and Culture, LTTR, a new queer feminist art journal and North Drive Press #2 . He has curated video programs for the MIX Experimental Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS). Mateik graduated from Hampshire College in 1997 with a BA in Video and from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute , in 2004 with an MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts.