b. 1998, New York, NY
Lives and works in New Haven, CT
Taína Cruz lives and works in New Haven. Across painting, sculpture, installation, and video, she builds immersive worlds where figures, objects and animals inhabit charged architectural spaces, staging acts of becoming.
Drawing on African American and Caribbean traditions and shaped by coming of age within networked image culture, Cruz approaches identity as fluid and iterative. Her work stages moments of transformation where folklore and contemporary visual systems overlap and evolve.
Taína Cruz received an MFA from Yale’s painting department in 2025 and a BFA in sculpture & critical theory from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore in 2020. Relevant exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2025); MMK Frankfurt (2025); Kraupa- Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin (2024); MoMA PS1, New York (2023); Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin (2023, solo); Studio Mondial, Berlin (2023); Martos Gallery, New York (2023); Kraupa- Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin (2023); Housing Gallery, New York (2022, solo); Embajada, San Juan (2022, solo); Housing Gallery, New York (2021); New Release Gallery, Online (2020); The Gormley Gallery, Baltimore, (2020).