“Artistry and creation are ways to embody and re-envision the world we want to inhabit. It is the bridge between our reality, spirituality, and activism.”

Nina Riley (she/they) is a multi-hyphenated artist, storyteller, and scholar shifting between Brooklyn and Philly. Her work roots in ancestral memory, black queer femme praxis, and healing modalities. 

She creates containers for black people to explore tender topics such as sexuality, bodily autonomy and reclamation, grief, and identity. She’s written about youthful self-discovery, placemaking, intimacy, home and purpose. All of which she’s continuously exploring in becoming and undoing as a young artist. Her mission is to write honestly and vulnerably about black lives and heal through artistic expression. She’s created curriculums, performances, and social justice campaigns alongside arts and advocacy nonprofits like Broadway Advocacy Coalition, The National Urban League, and the African American Policy Forum. Her commitment to equity and artmaking earned her the LGBTQ Center Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Advocate of the Year Award, The Pace University Jurors Prize in Art, and the Working Theater’s Mark Pleasant Commission Fund for Playwrights. Her work reflects her devotion to developing pathways toward accessible, innovative, and culturally responsive initiatives.

Nina developed her multi-hyphenated practice in the Art and Public Policy Masters Program at New York University (May 2023) where she expanded her research on performativity, corporealities, and cultural intimacies; as a freelance director and dramaturg; and as a company member/teaching artist with ViBeTheater Experience. She currently works as viBeTheater Experience’s Development Assistant for the 2023-24 season. This summer she will lead viBeStages first ever Twinning Program in Philadelphia and act as the Co-Artistic Director of The NAP and viBe’s collaborative program: Journey To Self. 

She’s here by way of her father Eugene R, grandmother, and all those that no longer share space on this plane…

She loves good food, hearty laughter, the occult, and any reason to celebrate <3

Stay tuned for my newsletter dropping September 2024!