Tariqa Waters

Tariqa Waters (born 1980) is a multifaceted contemporary artist known for her whimsical larger-than-life fabrications, painting, self-portraiture and installations. Waters works in varied media, including canvas, wood, plastic, ceramics, paint, glass, and photography. Waters’ work has been featured in numerous institutions and galleries including the Seattle Art Museum, Frye Art Museum, Hedreen Gallery, and Pivot Art + Culture. Waters’ work has been featured in issues of Rolling Stone France and Madame Figaro magazines.

In 2016, her critically acclaimed solo exhibition, 100% Kanekalon: The Untold Story of the Marginalized Matriarch, exhibited at the Northwest African American Museum. In 2020 Waters’ much anticipated exhibition, Yellow No.5 debuted at the Bellevue Arts Museum. Her celebrated five-room blown-glass immersive installation, Gum Baby, opened at the Museum of Museums in fall 2022. In the summer of 2023 Water's large scale installation "4th Sunday" exhibited at the Seattle Art Fair and Art on Paper New York.

As the founding owner of Martyr Sauce Pop Art Museum & Gallery, located in the historic Seattle arts district of Pioneer Square, Waters is dedicated to cultivating artistic space and community. Waters has served in various arts organizations and institutions as well as co-founding Re:Definition gallery at the Paramount Theatre in 2015, an on-going partnership with the Seattle Theatre Group redefining historic cultural space. In addition to Waters’ being a featured keynote speaker, Martyr Sauce became a Cultural Partner of the Seattle Art Fair the summer 2017.

In the summer of 2021 Waters expanded Martyr Sauce into a pop art museum MS PAM. Waters commissions artists in collaborative works facilitating transformative and immersive experiences through public engagement. In 2022, Waters new innovative chapter "Thank you, MS PAM", an educational and entertaining television show for all ages airs quarterly on The Seattle Channel KCTS9 PBS. <

Early life and education
Waters was born in Richmond, Virginia. She has lived in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Georgia, and Sicily, relocating to Seattle, Washington in 2012. Waters is a self-taught artist.

Career
Waters opened Martyr Sauce in 2013, as an artist-led gallery and neighborhood cultural institution, showcasing underrepresented artists. In 2015, along with Jonathan Moore, she founded RE: DEFINITION, a gallery at the Paramount Theater bar with the same aim of elevating underrepresented artists, as well as redefining historic cultural space.

Alongside her work at Martyr Sauce and RE:DEFINITION, Waters continued work on her own art. Her solo exhibition, 100% Kanekalon: The Untold Story of the Marginalized Matriarch, opened at the Northwest African American Museum in Seattle in 2016.

Waters, curated a group exhibition called Yellow Number 5 at the Bellevue Arts Museum (BAM), in Bellevue, Washington, held in 2020 and 2021. As BAM's first Black and Black woman curator, Waters succeeded in removing Executive Director Benedict Heywood and holding BAM's board and staff accountable for their racism and other intersectional systems of oppression.

In the summer of 2021 Waters expanded Martyr Sauce into a pop art museum MS PAM. Waters was recognized in 2023 as one of Seattle Magazine's Most Influential Artists.