Tanya Chaly was born in Sydney, Australia and currently lives and works in New York City. In her recent practice she has been using painting and drawing, creating objects and images of the natural world and turning them into cultural artefacts. She creates layered and involved worlds drawing on a wide range of influences from Gothic, Primitivism, Eastern Philosophy, Psychology, and the Natural Sciences. The ongoing themes in her work are memory, loss, the Natural World and the history of Natural History.

She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1991 and went on to complete a Post Graduate Diploma in 1992 from the University Of New South Wales, College of Fine Arts, Sydney, Australia. In 2002 she enrolled in a Bachelor of Art History at the University of Burgundy, Dijon, France. In 2005 she was appointed a teaching position at the Ecole Media D’Art, Chalon sur-Saone, France and in 2007 she relocated to New York City.

She has held several solo shows and been the recipient of a number of awards and prizes, including a New South Wales Ministry for The Arts, Gunnery Residency in Sydney, Australia in 2006. And in 2013 she was awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, VT. Most recently her work has been shown at the Masur Museum of Art Louisiana, USA, SUNY Geneseo NY, and The Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Arts Centre, MD. Her work can be found in the public collections of: The Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, NSW, Stanthorpe Regional Art Gallery, Queensland, Nortel Australia, Crown Casino, Melbourne and other private and corporate collections in Australia, the UK and the United States.