“Centered on her community in Houston’s third ward, Bria Lauren’s photographs and films are stunning portraits of Black women and the spaces–domestic, psychic, social–that they inhabit and claim as their own. Larsen is an artist who is keenly attuned to her subjects and the intimacies and mundanities of their daily lives. With care and compassion, she captures the ways in which personal style functions as a crucial means of self-possession, while honoring the multiplicity of Black womanhood and maternal life.” – Rebecca Matalon, Curator, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

Bria Lauren (B. Houston, TX) is a Texas native, born and raised in Third Ward, Houston. The south is a sacred and integral part of her work as a visual storyteller, healer, and queer Black woman utilizing ancestral healing as a tool to navigate intersectionality as an act of resistance. Analog photography is a catalyst for Lauren to translate her own unspoken vulnerability, visually and to hold space for marginalized voices to be seen, honored, cared for, and respected. The heartbeat and intention of Lauren’s work intersects race, gender, vulnerability, motherhood, and Black feminism. She travels through time using 35mm, medium format, and motion picture film to bridge social and political gaps within her community – to communicate the true essence of one’s identity and truth without censorship. She is currently developing an ongoing body of work, ‘Gold Was Made Fa’ Her’ that will be exhibited in Houston Fall of 2021.

Bria Lauren is the recipient of the 2020 Houston Artadia Award.

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