Andrea “Philly” Walls is a multidisciplinary artist, informed and inspired by the writers and visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement. She is among the first cohort of artists to be designated as Philadelphia Cultural Treasures and is serving in her third year as Artist in Residence at Drexel University’s, Writers Room. She is pleased that her writing, scholarship, and visual art have been supported by organizations she admires, including the Leeway Foundation, VONA/Voices Workshops for Writers of Color; Black Public Media/MIT Open Documentary Lab, Hedgebrook Residencies for Women Authoring Change; The Colored Girls Museum; Writers Room at Drexel University; The Studio Museum of Harlem; The Women’s Mobile Museum, Eastern State Penitentiary; Mural Arts Philadelphia; and FabYouth Philly. In addition to The Museum of Black Joy, Andrea is the creator and curator of The D’Archive.com, author of the poetry chapbook, Ultraviolet Catastrophe (Thread Makes Blanket Press) and the digital web-collection, The Black Body Curve. com

Andrea encourages you to use her bio as a map to make connections with organizations that make a daily commitment to uplift work and workers who emerge from diverse origin stories.

Artist Statement: I see color and glory in it. I imagine & ritualize an opulent Black future rooted in joy.

MUSEUM OF BLACK JOY IN THE NEWS

RECENT PROJECTS & MEDIA

VARIANCE: RITUAL FOR A HOME

A COLLABORATION WITH THE COLORED GIRLS MUSEUM & MZ.ICAR

PHILLY FRINGE FESTIVAL, SEPTEMBER 2024

Women’s Mobile Museum & Museum of Black Joy in South Africa

SEPTEMBER, 2022

MEMES OF CONSCIOUSNESS: WHERE BEAUTY INTERVENES

EASTERN STATE PENITENTIARY | MAY-SEPTEMBER 2021

ROADMAP TO JOY, SUMMER 2021