Biography
Tega Brain is an Australian artist and environmental engineer born when atmospheric CO2 was below 350 ppm. Her practice examines ecology, data, automation, and infrastructure through the creation of adversarial systems, including environmentally driven digital networks, schemes for obfuscating personal data, and a widely circulated smell-based dating service. Framing her work as Eccentric Engineering, Brain critiques technological solutionism while proposing ecological and infrastructural alternatives.
Her work has been exhibited widely at the Smithsonian Museum (Arts and Industries), the Whitney Museum of American Art, ZKM Karlsruhe, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, and Haus der elektronischen Künste. She has received awards, fellowships and residencies from Ars Electronica, Eyebeam, Pioneer Works, Data & Society, and the Rockefeller Foundation, and was a 2023 Creative Capital Awardee for an experimental body of work developing alternative carbon offsetting methodologies.
Brain is an Industry Associate Professor of Integrated Design and Media at New York University and serves on the board of the School for Poetic Computation. She holds a PhD in Media Arts from the Australian National University, an MA from the Queensland University of Technology, and a BE in Environmental Engineering from the University of New South Wales. She lives and works in New York and maintains a long-running collaboration with artist Sam Lavigne.