Tali Weinberg

2026 Brandford/Elliott Award for Excellence in Fiber Art Recipient

Tali Weinberg is an interdisciplinary artist whose textile-based practice explores the interconnected crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and human health. Through the intimate hand processes of weaving, dyeing, and coiling, she transforms scientific research, climate data, and reclaimed materials into works that examine relationships among extraction, pollution, species decline, illness, and care. Drawing on both ecological and bodily systems, her sculptures and textiles often evoke forms associated with healing and mourning, including shrouds, burial flags, hospital gauze, roots, lungs, and circulatory networks.

Central to Weinberg’s practice is Datascapes, a decade-long project that materializes climate data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as woven landscapes, waterscapes, and sculptural forms. By translating numerical data into tactile, hand-crafted objects, she creates new ways of understanding environmental change while challenging conventional approaches to data visualization. More recent works investigate trees as vital components of ecological, climate, immune, and knowledge systems, using textile techniques and repurposed medical materials to draw powerful connections between human and more-than-human forms of care and resilience. Read Tali’s artist statement here.

Through weaving’s intersecting systems and structures, I merge expressions of scientific research with that of lived experience, record keeping with grieving, and handcraft with digital tools in order to retrace and reimagine relationships between corporeal and ecological bodies.

Weinberg is a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Creative Accelerator Grant, an Illinois Artist Fellowship, a Puffin Foundation Individual Artist Grant, and multiple artist residencies, including the Museum of Arts and Design, Praxis Fiber Workshop, Berea College’s Digital Weaving Residency, Stove Works, and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. She was also named to the White Columns Curated Artist Registry.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions including the Denver Botanic Gardens, New York University Gallatin Galleries, Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Mills College Art Museum, Georgia Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Museum, Chautauqua Institution, Form & Concept, and the Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art in China, as well as galleries throughout Australia, Canada, and the United States. Her work is held in the collections of the Berkeley Art Museum, Denver Botanic Gardens, and Georgia Museum of Art. Her exhibitions and projects have been featured in The New York Times, American Craft, Colossal, Dovetail Magazine, COVER Magazine, and numerous other publications.

An active educator and speaker, Weinberg has taught workshops and presented lectures at institutions including Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Penland School of Craft, the Museum of Arts and Design, East Carolina University, Winona State University, and the College Art Association. Her writing has appeared in Ecotone, Feral Fabric Journal, Bluestem Literary Magazine, and the proceedings of the Textile Society of America.

Weinberg holds an MFA from California College of the Arts and both an MA and BA from New York University. She currently lives and works in Illinois.

The Brandford/Elliott Award will support the next phase of Weinberg’s practice, including new collaborations with climate and conservation organizations that explore the relationship between ecological health and community well-being. Building on her ongoing investigations of climate data, trees, and interconnected systems of care, Weinberg plans to develop new artwork and public programs focused on the history and future of Illinois’ tree canopy and its connections to both human and ecosystem health.