Tabitha Arnold’s tapestries pulse with the energy of labor and of social and economic struggle. Colorful figures join in factory work, picket lines, and demonstrations, and the visual results are both brilliantly decorative and deadly serious about the history and hopes of labor in America, including in her native South.
Arnold was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee—where she lives and works today—and trained as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. She turned to weaving, then discovered the subject matter that animates her work today after becoming involved in a movement to unionize café workers. Her depictions of labor activism range from the historical to the contemporary; as an organizer, she is deeply involved with the renascent labor movement, and is the resident artist at Dissent, a leading journal of leftist theory and practice.
Arnold has held solo exhibitions at Field Projects in Manhattan, the Worker’s Art and Heritage Center in Hamilton, Ontario, the List Gallery at Swarthmore College, and the Institute of Contemporary Art Chattanooga. Her works are held in several collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Dom Museum Wien in Vienna. She was the recipient of the 2025 Southern Prize for Visual Art from South Arts.
Tabitha Arnold.
