Qiaira Riley
Qiaira Riley is an interdisciplinary artist + educator +cultural worker, raised on Chicago’s south-side and based in Philadelphia. Working between writing, research, visual art, programming and curation, Qiaira has shown a deep interest in supporting and creating socially engaged art experiences at the intersections of race and gender. 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 & Design. She is a co-founder and curator of 2.0, a collective collaborating with artists and organizations to curate free, experimental offerings for Black women and femmes. Qiaira’s 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.
Her studio work has been shown across the United States including Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, IL; Cherry Street Pier, Paradigm Gallery, and Public Trust in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Qiaira has enjoyed residencies with the Wedding Cake House in Providence, RI; Ma’s House on the Shinnecock Reservation in New York; and Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia, PA. As a part of her socially-engaged creative practice, Qiaira has had awards from and collaborations with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation, Mural Arts, Monument Lab and the Leeway Foundation.
She also hosts "Something You Can Feel," a contemporary Black art history podcast, that can be found on Apple and Spotify. Recently, Qiaira was the Community Artist Partner with The Friends of the Tanner House, curating a series of multi-generational arts programming uplifting the family and home of artist Henry O. Tanner and its urgent stabilization efforts. She is currently a PhD student of Art History at the University of Delaware with an interest in women-ran house museums and historic domestic sites that are connected to Black history and culture.
Awarded Grants
2025
Window of Opportunity Grant (WOO)
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Overview
Qiaira Riley has been invited to participate in Mahogany at 50, a citywide celebration in Chicago honoring the 50th anniversary of the iconic Motown film Mahogany. In July, at the Mahogany Community Fest hosted at the DuSable Black History Museum in partnership with the Chicago Park District, Qiaira will lead a hands-on cyanotype activation where participants create sun-prints inspired by the film’s visual aesthetics and Black Chicago’s rich cultural motifs. As an artist and cultural organizer committed to centering Black femmehood through community-based artmaking, this project expands upon Qiaira’s Philly-based workshops that use alternative photography to explore Black visual culture, nostalgia, and collective memory.
The WOO Grant will support with airfare, accommodations, and the material costs to build a portable UV light box for cyanotype exposures.
2022
Residencies
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Overview
Leeway x Fleisher’s 2022 Visual Artist-in-Residence, Qiaira Riley will focus her residency on creating a visual ode to Jet Magazine’s periodic depictions of Black American lifestyles, culture, and beauty. Qiaira’s project, entitled “Beauty of the Week”, honors Jet’s archive as a tangible space to explore Black American legacy and memory through aesthetics. Utilizing imagery Jet, Qiaira will create a series of 10-15 hand-built ceramic vessels, reminiscent of the Black cherub and angel figurines, often advertised in the magazine. Additionally, she also plans to create a series of cyanotypes, utilizing various found imagery from Jet, while incorporating screen printed text and graphics from popular products often featured in the magazine.
With this visual work, Qiaira will facilitate a series of community cyanotype workshops, where participants are invited to bring their own personal photo negatives, as well as utilize imagery from Jet to create collective sun-printed tapestries on mural-sized fabric. Through these workshops, Qiaira aims to create a collective artistic practice centering the history, memories, and experiences of the descendants of Black American exodus, while also inviting space to explore how this lineage connects to contemporary migration narratives.
2021
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
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Overview
Qiaira's project, "All Fire Signs go to Heaven or the Emancipation of Mimi: Soul Singing and the Politics of Surrogation in the Age of Catastrophe", will be an art and performance festival exploring hyper femininity; performances of the urban; the futurity of mixed race identity; and the perceived excessiveness of the Black femme body personality and mind through the lens of Mariah Carey's The Emancipation of Mimi. The festival will include an art exhibition, artist talk, musical performances, and an accompanying zine, all curated by a Black femme fire signs. Qiaira hopes that revisiting and reviewing this album will allow Black femmes to explore how they have long been over utilized, but seldom receive opportunities to truly center, celebrate, and honor themselves.