Ria Brodell
Neighborhood Luminary Salon
Ria Brodell is a queer and trans artist, educator, and author based in Boston. Their work explores gender, sexuality, and identity within the context of history, contemporary society, science, and religion. Brodell attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, received a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts University. Brodell has exhibited throughout the United States and internationally. They are a recipient of an Artadia Award, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, a SMFA Traveling Fellowship, and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Their work has appeared in New York Magazine, the Guardian, ARTNews, ArtReview, the Boston Globe, and New American Paintings, among other publications. Brodell’s books, Butch Heroes and More Butch Heroes, were published in 2018 and 2025 by MIT Press.
You can visit Ria at riabrodell.com or on Instagram at @riabrodell.
Photo Credit: Kathleen Dooher
The Neighborhood Salon is supported in part by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs, the Polly Thayer Starr Charitable Trust, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. These programs are funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
