Bria Lauren (b. 1993) is a transdisciplinary visual artist, archivist, cultural curator, and community organizer born and raised in Third Ward, Houston. The South is a sacred and integral part of her work as a visual storyteller, auntie, photographer, community organizer, cultural worker, and queer Black woman utilizing hood feminism as a social practice to navigate intersectionality and community building as an act of resistance. The heartbeat and intention of Bria’s work intersect Black feminist theory, hood relics, ancestral healing, vulnerability, and motherhood. She travels through time using photography, archival research, writing, installation, and film to communicate the true essence of Black femmehood and one’s identity without censorship.

Bria is the founder and ½ of the htx people project (2015-2020). The collective adapted the heartbeat of film, photography, and storytelling to isolate oppression and re-articulated a community-based language of freedom and equality. The htx people project were residents of the Artists Studio Program at the Lawndale Art Center (2017-2018) and a part of Artist Round 50: Race, Health, and Motherhood at Project Row Houses (2018-2019). Bria is a two-time grantee of the Idea Fund by DiverseWorks in partnership with Aurora Picture Show and Project Row Houses in 2016 and 2021, Houston Arts Alliance’s Let Creativity Happen Grant recipient in 2019, and a 2020 Houston Artadia Award Finalist. 

Bria’s solo exhibition, Gold Was Made Fa’ Her, took place at Lawndale Art Center in 2021. She has participated in group shows including There Is Enough For Everyone at Blaffer Art Museum (2020), FOTO ATX Exhibit at George Washington Carver Museum (online, 2020), IKE Smart City in collaboration with the City of Houston (2022), and Allium at Womxnhouse Detroit (2022). She has participated in Eldorado Nights (2021), Project Row Houses, where she curated ‘Eye on Third Ward’ as an extension of her participation, and she has organized the Jack Yates Production Experience: A Visual Arts Workroom (2022-23). She has given talks at Rice University, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and her work and profile have been featured in Forward Times, Afro Punk, Outsmart Magazine, CRWN Magazine, Voyage Houston, F Magazine, Houston Chronicle, Gulf Coast Journal, Deep Red Press, It’s Nice That, and Houstonian Magazine.