Taiessa (pronounced tai-ē-ssa) is a white settler artist and educator living in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton). She obtained a Fine Art diploma with distinction from MacEwan University in 2018 before completing her BFA at the University of Alberta. Conceptually driven while rooted in process, she works primarily in printmaking, drawing, and soft sculpture. Her current work contends with colonial extraction, erasure, and accrual of capital through historical and contemporary plant collection. Speculating cautionary futures, Taiessa seeks to problematize our relationships to collection and exchange - instead proposing an understanding of care that divests from colonial power structures. In 2022/23, Taiessa was selected as the Artist in Residence at Harcourt House Artist Run Centre. The resulting body of work, variegata, was shortlisted for the 2024 Eldon + Anne Foote Edmonton Visual Arts Prize, with recent exhibitions at The Art Gallery of St. Albert and Esker Foundation. Taiessa is grateful for funding provided by the Edmonton Arts Council and Alberta Foundation for the Arts, her involvement in community organizing, and her experiences as Education Facilitator at The Works Art & Design Festival that further support and inform her work. Care and reflexivity motivate her artistic, administrative, and pedagogical practices within and beyond these engagements.