Tabitha Arnold makes labor-intensive art.

Born and deeply rooted in East Tennessee, Arnold tried to study painting in Philadelphia, until an Ann Hamilton exhibit inspired her to abandon the medium and try out tapestry weaving. In 2019, she began organizing a union at her workplace: a profound experience that called for making tapestries about labor. Using a rug-punching tool as a makeshift embroidery needle, Arnold borrows images from Bible Belt spirituality, social realism, and pre-modern art to create monuments for the working class. Her practice comes out of a generational revival of union organizing in the United States, and the tapestries tie this moment into a long lineage of historical class struggle, especially in the Appalachian South.

Arnold is the winner of the 2025 Southern Prize for Visual Art. She exhibits at union halls and labor conventions, along with traditional venues like Field Projects (Chelsea, NY) The Worker's Art and Heritage Center (Hamilton, ON) and Institute 193 (Lexington, KY). Her work has been reviewed by the New York Times, Interview, Jacobin, and the Guardian, and appears on covers for Dissent Magazine since 2021. Her pieces are in museum collections and on the walls of union-loving homes, but her biggest flex is a solidarity tapestry at the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) in Havana.