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Ariyah April works to build on the fierce Southern social movement supporting a greener, more just world. She believes each of us yearns to make life better for people and the planet. Her passion is helping folks take action to realize these goals, and themselves.
Photography is Ariyah’s platform for sharing compelling stories that incite behavior change. As a sustainable business consultant, she has spent a decade building mission-driven campaigns and communities. Through this lens, her emerging photography work examines and shares ideas around social justice and/or environmentalism. Her abstract acrylic painting work is similarly oriented, created in nature-inspired color palettes, like the opalescence of a geode.
In 2015, Ariyah is focusing the camera on queer Southern folks in nature. Her photos documenting the lives of four queer women living in Durham, NC will be included in the Queer Arts Festival’s “Y’All Come Back” show in San Francisco in June 2015. The exhibit will be shown in North Carolina in 2016.
Ariyah currently shoots for the Environmental Defense Fund's Earth Street social movement project on Tumblr and Instagram, sharing inspiring stories of the environmentalist next door.
Ariyah is a 2014 National Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program. She earned an MBA in Sustainable Enterprise and Consulting at UNC KenanFlagler Business School in 2009, and an AB in English and Women’s Studies at Duke University in 2001.
Recently, Ariyah’s work has been shown at The Carrack and Durham Art Guild’s SunTrust Gallery in North Carolina, and at the SF LGBT Center in San Francisco.