Bio
Meka Tome (b. 1999) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, CA. She holds a BFA in Sculpture & New Genres from Otis College of Art and Design and will begin her MFA in Glass at the Rhode Island School of Design in fall 2025. Her work has been exhibited throughout Los Angeles and featured in publications at the intersection of science and contemporary art. Tome has also collaborated on ecologically focused projects with art-science organizations such as Metabolic Studio and Forecast Foundation.
Tome’s practice explores the intricacies of perception, memory, and preservation in a world shaped by impermanence. Informed by natural and social sciences, she investigates how perception is constructed through the interplay of cognitive processes and environmental stimuli, positioning photography as both an archive and an active force in shaping memory.
Her approach is both project-based and process-driven, with each body of work emerging in response to specific questions and ongoing research. Tome centers analog photographic processes and collaborations with organic materials, light, and water. Past projects include chlorophyll printing on leaves and cyanotypes shaped by the hydrologic cycle. These works reflect nature’s agency, the ephemeral quality of existence, and a critical engagement with the medium of photography.
Artist Statement
In an image-driven world, I challenge our passive relationship with photography by shifting attention toward the indexical properties inherent in the process of creation, rather than the content of an image.
I am curious about how our fleeting encounters with images can, over time, subtly shape us psychologically and physiologically. My work explores the parallels between photographic and biological processes, considering how light, chemical reactions, and natural cycles serve as collaborators in the creation of meaning. Through a research-driven, experimental practice that embraces unpredictability, I aim to disrupt the immediacy of the photographic image and distill photography to its essence: the act of witnessing light.
Photographs are living records of interactions between matter, time, and intention. By foregrounding material processes of transformation, decay, and growth, I invite viewers into a more active, embodied relationship with images. My work questions the role of preservation in how we have come to understand photography, and seeks to reveal both the generative possibilities and fallibility of the medium.
