Reyah: Becoming Reyah

PATRICIA SWEETOW GALLERY Patricia Sweetow Gallery was honored to successfully debut a stunning series of archival pigment prints from Reyah, a self-taught artist, at Untitled Art 2023. The gallery now greatly anticipates Reyah’s first one-person exhibition opening Saturday, February 24th–a not to miss event!

Reyah’s body of work in self-portraiture represents a multi-year timeline of building knowledge and experience with their medium-format camera. Their nude self-portraits are classic compositions, until the viewer registers yards of manipulated rope coursing round their body. Dre Hudson is an artist, who gave agency to his nonbinary alter ego Reyah, releasing Hudson from binary gender assumptions in the studio. Reyah composes, costumes, and photographs themself using rope as regal motifs of pageantry. Reframing rope from its legacy of violence and restraint liberates the artist from it’s historical weight. Alone in their studio, Reyah takes agency with all aspects of their process, constructing the rope costumes, lighting their body, and finally exposing the shot. Reyah advances a seductive coming of age story, Becoming Reyah.