Ria Brodell

Ria Brodell is an American artist, educator and author based in Boston.

Early life and education Brodell was born in Buffalo, New York and raised in Boise, Idaho. Brodell attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, MA.

Career Brodell has had solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, including the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston among others. Their work can be found in the collections of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum in Winter Park, Florida; the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul, Minnesota; the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Washington; the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City; the Davis Museum at Wellesley College; the Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, Georgia; and the Mary Alice Cooley Print Collection at Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle. Brodell's work has appeared in The Guardian, ARTnews, The Boston Globe, The Cut, New American Paintings, and Art New England. Brodell's book documenting their painting series Butch Heroes was released in 2018 by MIT Press.

Brodell teaches college-level studio art. Brodell has noted that teaching and making art requires a certain set of problem-solving skills.

In the creation of The Handsome and the Holy, Brodell says they would choose comforting figures such as a guardian angel, or even "the story of St. Anthony helping me to find GI Joe's lost gun, etc", in order to allow them to express their "queer desire" and as an avenue to "embody masculine figures" that they enjoyed.

Like The Handsome and the Holy, the Butch Heroes series seeks to depict role models and possible heroes throughout history that were gender nonconforming and tell their stories. Brodell does this through the style of Catholic holy cards - intricate depictions of saints or martyrs that tell a visual story and are meant for "private, portable devotions." Both of these series deal with Brodell's Catholic upbringing "'in relationship to [their] gender and sexuality and coming out and coming to terms with all that,' said Brodell…" in their book, Butch Heroes. In the book titled We Are Everywhere by Matthew Reimer it says, "The strong sister told the strong brother that there were two important things to remember about coming revolutions… The first is that we will get our asses kicked and the second is that we will win." It is here that Ria Brodell is winning and giving others hope and a chance to win as well.

Self-Portrait as a Nun or a Monk, ca. 1250 This piece is a work from their series The Handsome and the Holy and was painted in 2010. It contains two self-representative images: one of a nun, and one of a monk. It was exhibited alongside other pieces from their series The Handsome and the Holy and Butch Heroes. This work led them to research queer historical figures that were assigned female at birth, but masculine presenting, and eventually to pursue the well-known Butch Heroes series. Brodell discusses their shift from self-portraits to historical storytelling in an interview in 2016: Brodell began the process by wondering what their life would have been like had they been born in a different century. The works in this series all follow a similar style with the use of "bright and contrasting colors" alongside "bold designs" to capture the audience's attention.

The paintings depict, "people who were assigned female at birth, had documented relationships with women, and whose gender presentation was more masculine than feminine." Original and secondary sources, including newspaper articles, and personal journal entries are used to verify the information. Summarized narratives and research sources are included with each portrait so that others can do further research. The paintings are created in the style of Catholic holy cards as an homage to Brodell's Catholic upbringing. Images of the paintings, accompanying narratives and source material were published by the artist as a limited edition book, Butch Heroes: Paintings by Ria Brodell, in conjunction with the exhibition. In February 2018, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College released a limited edition Butch Heroes boxed card set. In October 2018 the MIT Press version, Butch Heroes, was released with additional paintings and narratives.

Since its release the book has been described as "an ambitious and wonderfully celebratory ode to the lives of 28 people over many centuries 'assigned female at birth' who 'had documented relationships with women, and whose gender presentation was more masculine than feminine... This is a serious—and seriously successful—queer history recovery project." "Butch Heroes is a fascinating, intersectional, feminist art-text project, and overall a rather wonderful reclamatory book of LGBT history that subvert and resonates in the human psyche." "The portraits give homage to contemporary ideas of queer ancestry, and in doing so give strength to trans and non-binary communities currently under attack. That makes Butch Heroes worth celebrating."

Catterina Vizzani Catterina Vizzani is one of the individuals included in Butch Heroes. He was born in Rome, and later began dressing in masculine clothing, and changed his name to Giovanni Bordoni. Giovanni attempted running away with the local minister's niece, whom he had a romantic connection with, but was captured and shot in the left thigh. The injury caused a fatal infection, causing his death which led to his organs being dissected to understand his sexuality. They were born in the village of Wehingen, Germany. Dietschi migrated to the Danube Valley in Germany, working as a farm laborer. A similar case in Europe occurred a decade before Kaiser’s case where the individual was drowned, 1477. By drawing a different animal every day, Brodell was able to gain insight into "the magnitude of animal species around the world." Brodell also mentioned that this project allowed them to continually practice drawing and to focus mentally. Brodell mentioned that despite the differences the overarching connection between those works was their "desire to make work that addresses subjects that [they] feel strongly about." Brodell was able to create unique works of art with eccentric creatures in peculiar settings. Through the act of observation, they created their drawings to depict the characteristics of the creatures they discovered, in addition to the perceived creatures' behaviors. Brodell was interviewed by Ellen Caldwell in 2018, where Brodell shared that their interest for this series (along with their other series Kingdom Animalia) was a basic interest of "animals and conservation". Brodell states they are the only explorer of these boundless locations; therefore, their artwork is their execution of their experiences from observing the creatures that solely inhabit the uncolonized lands. a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship and an SMFA Traveling Fellowship.

Butch Heroes was a finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Non-Fiction.

Personal life Brodell is non-binary and transgender. They use they/them pronouns. While Catholicism was an important, "comforting" part of their childhood, as they grew older, Brodell states that "I don't consider myself Catholic anymore," further continuing with "When I got older and I realized how the church felt about me and how they wanted me to live my life, "I don't know if I was angry or disappointed. Putting these people on holy cards that I identify with, it's a subversive way to replace those role models that that Catholic Church gave me with people I actually identify with."