Qiaira Riley

Qiaira Riley is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, educator and cultural worker, from Chicago’s south-side, and based in Philadelphia. She holds a dual B.A. in Black Studies and Studio Art from Lake Forest College, as well as an M.F.A in Socially Engaged Studio Art from Moore College of Art and Design. She is a founding member of 2.0, a Philadelphia based collective that curates free, experimental offerings for Black femmes and women. Her 2021 self-published, MFA-thesis-turned zine “How Tiffany Pollard Built the Internet: Representations of Simulacra, Virtuality and Black Women and Femmes on the Internet and its Art” is a part of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection. She is the host of “Something You Can Feel”, a contemporary Black art history podcast. Her creative practice shifts between painting, ceramics, artist books, video, and alternative photography and transfer techniques. Her work explores and is influenced by Black archival practices; the visual language of Chicago’s south-side,cooking phenomenology; vernacular interiors; storytelling; familial artifacts and reality tv. Qiaira was the January 2024 Resident at Our House Culture Center, showcasing her debut solo exhibition Beauty of the Week, a series of works created as the 2023 Leeway Foundation X Fleisher Art Memorial Artist in Residence.She is currently the artist partner with the Friends of the Tanner House, supporting creative opportunities to envision the future of the historic Henry O. Tanner House in North Philadelphia.