Payton Harris-Woodard’s (b. 1996, Chicago) earned her Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College Chicago, and her Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent exhibitions include Women one the Verge at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago,IL; Ground Floor Biennial at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago,IL; Generations at Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL; The Bronzeville Trolley Tour at Gallery Guichard, Chicago, IL; and Ultra Local at Van Der Plas Gallery, New York, NY. Her writing and artwork has been published in Hyperallergic Magazine, F News Magazine, and Hand Paper making Magazine where she published an interview with Howardena Pindell. Awards include the New Artist Society Full Merit Award at School of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Black Writers Fellowship with Hand Paper making Magazine; and, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts Fellowship.

In a larger societal and historical context, Harris-Woodard’s work explores the emotional and psychological complexities of inhabiting the black female body, while simultaneously questioning lexicons of aspirational black imagery in society. Part monster, part deity, her figures reconcile with reflection, isolation, and difference in celebration of finding one's own voice through femininity, trauma and black surrealism. Her figures incompletely expose the most humanistic aspects of the body, while placing emphasis on the monstrous qualities of one’s psyche. In the viewer's face, she juxtaposes ideas of beauty, while reclaiming a non linear journey of self-examination combining mundane and fantastical elements.