Therosia Reynolds

Therosia is an interdisciplinary visual and performance artist from South Phoenix, Arizona, and a proud descendant of Creole and Indigenous heritage within the African diaspora. Working across portraiture, textile processes, spoken word, and vocal performance, her practice explores cultural memory, spirituality, and resilience in the face of social and historical inequality. Raised in South Phoenix among what she describes as “gardens and graffiti, worship and war stories,” Reynolds draws deeply from her upbringing, where community, struggle, and faith existed side by side. Her work is also influenced by the textile artistry of her great-grandmother, whose quilting and handwork inform Reynolds’s use of embroidery and fabric as extensions of painting. These influences appear in her bold, symbolically charged use of color in historical portraiture, a style once described as “color aggressive.” Through layering paint, thread, and cloth, she engages the archive as a lived and embodied practice. Reynolds is a 2019 City Art Battle Champion and a participant in the Arizona Commission on the Arts Artist Investment Program. Her public art practice includes work on the Valley Metro Light Rail South Central Extension and mural installations in South Phoenix. She has served as a live painter for the East Valley NAACP Freedom Fund Awards and held residencies with the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts and the Tempe Elementary School District. She has performed as a poet and singer for Yasiel Puig and Bank of America’s African American heritage celebration. Through her work, she seeks to transform personal and collective histories into visual narratives of endurance, identity, and cultural memory. She recently concluded her acting and vocal performance in “Let’s Rock: Shakespeare to Tupac,” which was held at the Herberger Theater and then ASU Kerr Theater.