Sumire Skye Taniai was born in Iwakuni City, Japan where it is known for the U.S. Marine base. Ever since she moved to America in grade school, Taniai has been living in the Midwest for two decades. Taniai received her BFA from the University of Missouri in 2016 and an MFA with a full-merit scholarship from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019. 

Sumire Skye Taniai’s recent body of work deals with the experience of being an Asian American in this current hostile political climate. These works take on a direct response to the current racial injustices and the other side includes more of her personal experiences as a Japanese immigrant. She focuses on topics such as immigration, assimilation, Asian stereotypes, race, identity and transnationalism. Taniai believes that referencing Asian American historical events is important because these narratives are marginalized in education. Her digital works include collage and cultural quotations. The emergence of the internet has fostered the collapse of boundaries. The artist combines multiple sources to forge her invented narratives as hybrids of concepts derived from Eastern and Western cultures.