2026 State of the Art Prize, Louisiana

About Renee Benson

New Orleans, LA

Renee Benson is a vocal musician, performance and environmental artist living in New Orleans, LA. As a singer she’s been featured on TV, radio and film. She is the lead voice for the experimental jazz and hip hop collective, “No Home For Johnny,” labeled Vienna’s 2015 Popfest “highlight.” With Austria’s Vogelberg Jazz Orchestra, Renee is the performing vocalist for a commissioned original experimental opera she co-created with composer Vincent Pongracz, Leelah. She was in residence at the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans with Requiem for a Stranger with Vagabond Inventions. She serves on the board of the National Performance Network and has taught at Banff Centre of the Arts on Faculty for the Indigenous Arts: Wîchoîe Ahiya Indigenous Singer/Songwriter Intensive and freelances as the hip hop educational consultant for the Hamilton Education Program with The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Renee holds a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her new work with collaborators Doria Bramante and Jen Salenetti is titled The Want of Spring . TWOS an immersive, multisensory, theatrical journey created at Woven Roots Farm on the ancestral homelands of the Mohican Nation

Renee Benson is a vocal musician, performance and environmental artist living in New Orleans, LA. As a singer she’s been featured on TV, radio and film. She is the lead voice for the experimental jazz and hip hop collective, “No Home For Johnny,” labeled Vienna’s 2015 Popfest “highlight.” With Austria’s Vogelberg Jazz Orchestra, Renee is the performing vocalist for a commissioned original experimental opera she co-created with composer Vincent Pongracz, Leelah. She was in residence at the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans with Requiem for a Stranger with Vagabond Inventions. She serves on the board of the National Performance Network and has taught at Banff Centre of the Arts on Faculty for the Indigenous Arts: Wîchoîe Ahiya Indigenous Singer/Songwriter Intensive and freelances as the hip hop educational consultant for the Hamilton Education Program with The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Renee holds a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her new work with collaborators Doria Bramante and Jen Salenetti is titled The Want of Spring . TWOS an immersive, multisensory, theatrical journey created at Woven Roots Farm on the ancestral homelands of the Mohican Nation