Tia Keobounpheng

Tia Keobounpheng (b. 1977) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice weaves together geometry, abstraction, color, and fiber. Informed by her Finnish and Sámi heritage, her work navigates themes of identity and belonging. 

Keobounpheng’s intricately layered compositions emerge through a meticulous process of measuring, drafting, drilling, coloring, and threading. Each piece becomes a tactile meditation on memory, both ancestral and cellular, while also being rooted in a long tradition of women’s embodied labor.  Keobounpheng develops a multi-layered visual language grounded in geometry, not as a rigid system, but as a fluid, symbolic framework. Recurring motifs such as circles, curves, and radiating lines evoke natural rhythms and cycles, offering perspectives on transformation and continuity. 

At its core, Keobounpheng’s practice offers a richly textured inquiry into ancestral inheritance. Through abstract form, she embeds processes of reconciliation and hopeful imagination, creating work that invites viewers to engage with the layered complexities of selfhood, memory, and the unseen forces that shape human experience.

Keobounpheng has received numerous grants from the MN State Arts Board, the McKnight Foundation through the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the American Scandinavian Foundation. She has exhibited nationally, including a solo exhibition, Revealing Threads, at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (2023), Common Threads at Apple Park in Cupertino, CA (2024), Nordic Echoes at Scandinavia House in Manhattan, NY (2025). Her work is in the permanent collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota Museum of American Art, North Dakota Museum of Art, and University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN.