Tomo Mori
Tomo Mori, is a Japanese-born, New York-based painter, collage, and fiber artist whose richly textured work explores connection, memory, cultural identity, and the ways individual lives come together to form communities.
Born in Osaka, Japan, in 1973, Mori moved with her family to Tokyo as a young child. She pursued art from an early age, attending the Tokyo Metropolitan High School for Music and Fine Art before moving to the United States. She received her B.F.A. from the Atlanta College of Art, now SCAD Atlanta, in 1995. She lives and works in Harlem, New York.
Mori is particularly recognized for her distinctive mixed-media collages, in which hundreds of individually cut pieces of fabric are assembled into complex, rhythmic compositions. She works with materials that may include painted canvas, vintage textiles, discarded clothing, linens, and patterned fabrics from different cultures. These fragments become both artistic material and carriers of personal and collective memory.
Her compositions often resemble mosaics, cellular structures, organic forms, or digital pixels. For Mori, the accumulation of these individual elements carries a larger meaning: just as countless cells form a living organism, individual people come together to create families, cities, cultures, and communities. Different patterns and histories coexist within a unified whole.
This idea of interconnectedness extends into Mori’s sculptural fiber installations. Using donated and repurposed fabrics, she creates handmade ropes that can be twisted, woven, suspended, or formed into three-dimensional structures. The materials themselves often carry the histories of the people who contributed them, transforming the finished work into a physical expression of shared experience.
Before devoting herself fully to her studio practice, Mori spent more than eleven years working for an international news agency. Her daily exposure to stories of conflict, inequality, and human suffering profoundly influenced her understanding of art and strengthened her desire to create work centered on connection, resilience, and community.
Mori has exhibited at venues including The Newark Museum of Art, SCOPE Miami, FiveMyles, Rush Arts Gallery, and South Street Seaport. Her work has appeared at auction at Christie’s and Swann Auction Galleries. She has received public-art commissions from Columbia University, MTA Arts & Design, Governors Island, Walt Disney World Swan Reserve, and Mount Sinai Hospital. In 2023, she was selected for the Winter Workspace Residency at Wave Hill.
At the center of Tomo Mori’s practice is a deceptively simple idea. Many individual pieces can become something more powerful when brought together. Through color, pattern, texture, and repetition, she transforms fragments of fabric into vibrant fields of movement, works that celebrate difference while revealing the connections that bind people, histories, and cultures together.
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