Tan Mu (b. 1991, Shandong, China; lives and works in the United States) is a long-form, research-driven contemporary artist whose practice navigates the hidden architectures that shape our contemporary condition: submarine cable networks, data systems, cosmic perspectives, and the fragmented memory structures of both individuals and societies. Her work constructs a visual language that bridges structure and emotion across both macro and micro scales, emphasizing the themes of connection and continuity that underscore our shared human experience.

Combining traditional oil painting with tools of expanded vision including microscopes, satellite imagery, and scientific visualization, Tan Mu navigates the liminal space between technological history and personal experience. She views technology as both an extension of the body and an externalization of memory, creating compositions that interweave embryos, neurons, logic circuits, quantum computers, solar farms, data nodes, and celestial bodies. Through this layered imagery, she builds visual bridges between the visible and the invisible, the tactile and the abstract, the systemic and the affective.

Tan Mu’s ongoing Signal series is a sustained artistic investigation into the invisible architectures of global communication. Grounded in infrastructure, media geography, technological poetics, and human perception, the series transforms submarine fiber-optic networks into symbolic “digital constellations” that bridge abstraction and representation, emotion and system. Mu reimagines these hidden infrastructures not merely as technical constructs, but as vessels of collective memory and human connection. By fusing planetary systems with individual and cultural histories, Signal creates poetic diagrams of connection and rupture, mapping time, scale, and collective presence. Works from the Signal series have been acquired by major international collections, positioning the project within a global cultural dialogue.

Tan Mu holds a BFA in Expanded Media from Alfred University, New York (2015), and graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing in 2011. Her work has been exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions at Peres Projects (Berlin and Milan, 2022) and BEK Forum in Vienna (2025). She will be featured in a group exhbition at the ERES Froundation in Munich and has previously participated in group exhibitions at Arario Gallery, Shanghai (2025),  Penske Projects, New York; Winter Street Gallery, Martha’s Vineyard (2024); YveYANG, New York (2023). Her work has been featured and critically reviewed internationally, engaging themes of technology, memory, and visual abstraction across platforms such as Artnet News, Mousse Magazine, NumeroBerlin and others. Her paintings have been collected by both private and institutional collections internationally.

Institutional Collections

A.R.M. Holding Art Collection, United Arab Emirates
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Spain
The Institute for Electronic Arts, United States
Central Academy of Fine Arts Collection, Beijing
Alfred School of Art and Design Collection, New York

Fairs

Art021, Shanghai
Armory Show, New York
Art Basel, Switzerland
Art Basel, Miami Beach
Art Basel, Hong Kong
Artissima, Turin
Art Busan, Korea
Art Dubai
KIAF, Seoul
Art SG, Singapore
Frieze, London
Paris + Art Basel

Full portfolio upon request at studio@tanmustudio.com

For any inquiries about the artist’s work, including exhibitions, institutional collaborations, media, or project proposals, please contact Nick Koenigsknecht at nick@openforum.info