The ArtCity Collaborative was conceived by artist Anida Yoeu Ali to celebrate, promote, and unify the diverse creative ecosystem of Tacoma through honoring its history, commemorating its accomplishments, and nurturing its relationships with creative communities around the world. Ali organized and led the first ArtCity travel trip to Indonesia in 2024. In 2025, she collaborated with writer Jesi Vega to develop the Tacoma Mapping Project. The ArtCity Collaborative believes Tacoma stands as a thriving creative hub with the potential to be recognized as a global arts destination.
About ArtCity
Origin Story
ArtCity was conceived by internationally acclaimed artist Anida Yoeu Ali after she relocated to Tacoma, Washington in 2016. During her time living and working in Tacoma, she heard stories of an eclectic and vibrant arts scene, from heads rolling down city streets to a jam packed party with live graffiti writers inside a small storefront. She was struck by the range and creativity of these experiences, even when they existed in fragmented or fleeting forms.
As a newcomer to the region, Ali also observed a recurring pattern of burnout among arts and event organizers. She began to question whether each new initiative required “reinventing the wheel,” or whether there might be a way to sustain and connect these creative energies over time. This question became central to her thinking as she considered how Tacoma’s artistic vitality could be better supported, documented, and amplified.
In 2018, Ali crossed paths with writer and editor Jesi Vega. Recognizing a shared curiosity about cultural ecosystems, Ali invited Vega, along with four other Tacoma-based artists, to travel with her to Yogyakarta, Indonesia. There, they experienced a non-Western model of a thriving city that actively centers its creative economy. The trip proved catalytic and offered new frameworks for imagining a more sustainable and interconnected arts landscape in Tacoma.
As their friendship deepened, so did their ideas for cultivating a more resilient and prosperous art scene. Ali and Vega began collaborating to chronicle and map Tacoma’s artistic histories, laying the groundwork for what would eventually become the ArtCity Tacoma Mapping Project.
Our Mission & Vision
ArtCity’s mission is to celebrate, promote, and unify the diverse creative ecosystem of Tacoma through honoring its history, commemorating its accomplishments, and nurturing its relationships with creative communities around the world.
At its core, the ArtCity Collaborative envisions the following:
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Tacoma stands as a thriving creative hub with the potential to be recognized as a global arts destination.
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Its artists, makers, and cultural workers are not peripheral, but essential drivers of economic growth, civic identity, and cultural vitality.
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The creative community is deeply connected, unified in purpose, and supported at every stage of artistic development, from emerging voices to established leaders.
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We want artists living in Tacoma to be empowered to dream expansively and are given the resources, visibility, and support needed to realize those ambitions.
We are interested in projects that uphold these aspirations.
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The ArtCity Collaborative
Anida Yoeu Ali is an artist, educator and global agitator born in Cambodia, raised in Chicago and transplanted to Tacoma. Ali’s artistic works span performance, installation, new media, public encounters, and political agitation. Ali’s works have been exhibited widely at the Haus der Kunst, Palais de Tokyo, Musée d'art Contemporain Lyon, Shangri-La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture and Design, Seattle Asian Art Museum and the Vincent Price Art Museum. She is a founding member of multiple collaboratives including I Was Born With Two Tongues, Mango Tribe, Studio Revolt, ArtCity, One Table Show, Critical Acts, YAWP! and The Asian American Artists Collective-Chicago. She is a recipient of the 2024 Arts Innovator Award, the 2020 Art Matters Fellowship and the 2015 Sovereign Asian Art Prize. She received her MFA from School of the Art Institute Chicago and her BFA at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Ali currently serves as a Senior Artist-in-Residence at the University of Washington Bothell and works between the Asia-Pacific region and the U.S.
Jesi Vega is a writer, editor, and facilitator of stories. Trained as a screenwriter and performer, Jesi is dedicated to nurturing and amplifying voices from historically marginalized communities. Every month, she hosts Bar Stories , an inclusive storytelling night, and is a proud member of Tacoma's only roving theater company, One Table Show, which performs in restaurants, cafes, and bars around the city. Jesi holds a BA in Film & Theater from Vassar College and a Masters Degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School where she studied the role of narrative in world religious traditions. Her multicultural perspective and passion for illuminating untold stories are rooted in her origins as a Puerto Rican-Jew raised in a Socialist Housing Cooperative in The Bronx.