TARIQA WATERS
Tariqa Waters (b. 1980) is a visionary contemporary artist, author, curator, and community leader, renowned for her unique “pop maximalist” aesthetic. Her captivating, whimsical, larger-than-life installations and vibrant tableaux command space, dissecting the complexities of Black popular culture beyond the Western canon. She uses storytelling with cleverly placed anachronisms to unravel the contradictions and dualities inherent in vices rooted in Americana-distorted memories and tall tales. Waters’ multifaceted practice spans painting, blown glass, photography, film, and large-scale fabrications, establishing a distinct niche in the art world. In 2012, she founded Martyr Sauce in Seattle’s Pioneer Square, a groundbreaking conceptual art space that evolved into a vibrant cultural hub. This Black-owned, women-led center served as a gallery, performing arts venue, and beauty supply store, further expanding its influence with the launch of MS PAM (Martyr Sauce Pop Art Museum) in 2020. Martyr Sauce became a neighborhood landmark with its unique crosswalk in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square, garnering nationwide recognition through collaborations and curatorial projects with various esteemed institutions. Her 2025-2026 commissions with the WNBA Seattle Storm include new merchandise, six crosswalks, and a wrap-around mural for the Seattle Storm Foundation. In 2022, Waters transformed Martyr Sauce into “Thank You, MS PAM,” a television series inspired by a short film that was acclaimed at festivals such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Film Festival. It has since been developed into an episodic series aired on The Seattle Channel KCTS 9, a PBS affiliate. Her artwork has been exhibited in numerous prestigious museums and galleries and featured in publications such as Rolling Stone France, Madame Figaro, Artsy, and Dazed Magazine. Celebrated as one of Seattle Magazine’s Most Influential Artists, Waters has received numerous accolades, including the 2016 Conductive Garboil Grant, the Artist Trust Fellowship Award (2018), the Kayla Skinner Special Recognition Award (2020), the Gary Glant Special Recognition Award (2021), the Neddy at Cornish Open Medium Award (2020), the Arts Innovator Award (2023), and The Seattle Art Museum’s Bowen Award (2023). Her solo exhibit, “Venus is Missing” at the Seattle Art Museum (2025–2026), offers an immersive blown glass retro-Afrofuturist exploration where childhood artifacts are reimagined as cosmic technology. Beyond visual art, Waters contributes as a writer and arts advice columnist for Public Display Arts Magazine’s “Ask, MS PAM.” In 2025, she published her debut book, “Who Raised You? A Martyr Sauce Guide to Etiquette,” a hybrid monograph and memoir providing insights into her artistic philosophy and personal journey. This book is now housed in libraries such as the New York Public Library, Seattle Public Library, Seattle Art Museum Library, Stanford University, Green Library, Museum of the African Diaspora, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Watson Library.
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Screened at both the Brooklyn Academy of Music Film Festival and Seattle Black Film Festival 2023, Thank you, MS PAM is an educational and entertaining television show for all ages, starring powerhouse, Tariqa Waters celebrating artists and creatives. MS PAM (Martyr Sauce Pop Art Museum) impact on downtown Seattle’s Historic Arts District, Pioneer Square has been vastly celebrated for over a decade. Ever changing and full of vibrant whimsy, MS PAM is the cultural hub for fun and quirky comedy sketches, interviews, cooking and art making segments featuring artists, creatives and local small business owners/community members. The television show will also showcase in-studio visits, shopping/local boutiques, restaurant cooking segments and recreational indoor and outdoor activities. Archived Director's Cut episodes are available to rent. Fiscally Sponsored by the Northwest Film Forum, all proceeds supports artist collaborations and production cost. Catch new episodes on The Seattle Channel/KCTS 9!
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Over the years, the art of storytelling has served as a resourceful tool within the evolution of my work. When I sit and think about my journey as a Black woman and mother in an inequitable art market, I often find myself developing innovative ways to lampoon and defy generalizations that doubt my capabilities. Whether sustaining a decade-long, renowned, conceptual brick & mortar community-based art installation called, Martyr Sauce or shapeshifting said brick & mortar into a television show called, Thank You, MS PAM on The Seattle Channel celebrating artists, creatives, and small businesses around the PNW, or evolving my preferred medium from oil painting to motorized large-scale immersive fabrications and blown glass, I’ve never shied away from taking risks. Humor, satire and spectacle are prevalent in most of my works, but I always aspire for the work to resonate as very personal and sincere; Made evident as the first artist ever commissioned in historic Pioneer Square to design a crosswalk, in which I reimagined the traditional white lines and replaced them with vibrant, colorful afro picks, bringing a tangible sense of inclusion and community to the neighborhood. In my self-portrait work, the women and men from my upbringing are lauded as muses blurring the line between feminine and masculine. To underscore their stories and elevate them out of the margins, I’ve excelled in genre-bending traditional pop aesthetics within photography, film, three-dimensional installations, and large-scale fabrications that I construct by hand; The anachronisms in these candy-colored tableaus showcase stand alone pieces in an attempt to subvert the ubiquitous co-option of my culture, redefine consumerism, and expose the sticky contradictions and dualities inherent in vices rooted in Americana-distorted memories and tall tales.
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