WHO RAISED YOU? A Martyr Sauce Guide To Etiquette

IN DEVELOPMENT: ANTICIPATED RELEASE SUMMER 2025 8 x 8.375 inches; ~75 four-color images; 96 pages; hardcover$50 plus shipping  Tariqa Waters is an activist artist, using humor, color, and pop iconography to attract audiences into her joyous world. It is a space of strength and laughter, of family and music, where beauty is celebrated and misogyny and racism are trapped in used bubble gum and thrown in the trash. Waters’ work often includes everyday objects and brands from her childhood, fostering accessible entry points to deeper issues of social power dynamics related to feminism, race, and class. Through a unique gallery that evolved through three locations in Seattle, additional curatorial projects with museums, bars, and theatres, and her performance talk show, “Thank You, MS. PAM,” Waters, along with her husband, musician Ryan Waters, and their two children, have uplifted music, fashion, and the work of dozens of contemporary visual artists.    This first book is both a survey of her paintings, sculptures, installations and public works of the last decade, and a primer on navigating the challenges and opportunities of a family’s creative life. TARIQA WATERS (b. 1980, Richmond, Virginia; lives in Seattle) lived in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC and Sicily, among other locales, before moving to Seattle. In 2012, while working three part-time jobs, she also launched Martyr Sauce in the foyer and stairwell of the apartment she shared with her husband and their two children. Through commercial development, economic transitions, and COVID, the Waters family celebrated art and culture in their Pioneer Square neighborhood for a decade, culminating in a custom crosswalk designed and executed by Tariqa Waters in 2022. Waters has had solo exhibitions at the Hedreen Gallery, Seattle University; the Northwest African American Museum; and a five-part immersive multimedia installation at The Museum of Museums. She has been recognized with the Northwest’s top honors including a 2018 Artist Trust Fellowship, the 2020 Neddy Award, and in 2023 was awarded the Arts Innovator Award, and the Betty Bowen Prize from the Seattle Art Museum, where her work will be on view in a solo exhibition in 2025.