The body holds a knowledge all its own. It is in intimate relationship with all that surrounds it as it ingests, breaths, spills, in and out of the land and the water. My body is an extension of the earth, and therefore the earth is always a research partner.
Tyler is fiscally sponsored through New York Live Arts. Support her work with a tax deductible donation.
Tyler Rai is a transdisciplinary artist, ritualist, and producer who works across live performance, narrative essays, and experimental sound works. She draws connections between grief and mourning practices, biological and cultural inheritances, geologic time, and ecological change to reveal the poetic entanglements between spirituality, mythology, embodied experience, and earth's ecological systems.
Rai’s performances and installations have been presented nationally at The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (CA), Fairfield Art Museum (CT), the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MI), The Jewish Museum of Maryland (MD), The Philadelphia Fringe Festival (PA), Governors Island (NY), ARC Pasadena (CA), Judson Church (NY), and SPACE Gallery (ME).
She has received support from the Assets for Artist MA Capacity Building Grant, American Geophysical Union, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Lectures about her work in the arts and sciences have been given to students at The Governor’s Institute of the Arts, UMASS Amherst, and the Land Arts of the American West program at University of New Mexico. Her writing has been published in a range of forums including anthologies, magazines, and humanities journals.
Rai is passionate about supporting other artists through her work as an independent producer and somatic educator.
She completed her MFA in Environmental Art + Social Practice from UC Santa Cruz and is currently based between California and the East Coast.