2026 State of the Art Prize, Georgia

About Nydia Blas

Atlanta, GA

Nydia Blas is a visual artist who grew up in Ithaca, New York and currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia. She holds a B.S. from Ithaca College and received her M.F.A. from Syracuse University in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Visual Culture at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She has taught courses for the High Museum of Art, Anderson Ranch, and Image Text MFA program at Cornell University. She has completed artist residencies at Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and The Center for Photography at Woodstock, and with Villa Albertine in Marseille, France. Her work has been commissioned by ProPublica, NPR, The New York Times, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, and more. Nydia uses photography, collage, video, and books to address matters of sexuality, intimacy, and her lived experience as an American girl, woman, and mother of Panamanian descent. She delicately weaves stories concerning circumstance, value, and power and uses her work to create a physical and allegorical space presented through a Black feminine lens. The result is an environment that is dependent upon the belief that in order to maintain resiliency, a magical outlook is necessary. In this space, props function as extensions of the body, costumes as markers of identity, and gestures/actions reveal the performance, celebration, discovery, and confrontation involved in reclaiming one’s body for their own exploration, discovery, and understanding.

Nydia Blas is a visual artist who grew up in Ithaca, New York and currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia. She holds a B.S. from Ithaca College and received her M.F.A. from Syracuse University in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Visual Culture at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She has taught courses for the High Museum of Art, Anderson Ranch, and Image Text MFA program at Cornell University. She has completed artist residencies at Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and The Center for Photography at Woodstock, and with Villa Albertine in Marseille, France. Her work has been commissioned by ProPublica, NPR, The New York Times, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, and more. Nydia uses photography, collage, video, and books to address matters of sexuality, intimacy, and her lived experience as an American girl, woman, and mother of Panamanian descent. She delicately weaves stories concerning circumstance, value, and power and uses her work to create a physical and allegorical space presented through a Black feminine lens. The result is an environment that is dependent upon the belief that in order to maintain resiliency, a magical outlook is necessary. In this space, props function as extensions of the body, costumes as markers of identity, and gestures/actions reveal the performance, celebration, discovery, and confrontation involved in reclaiming one’s body for their own exploration, discovery, and understanding.